SEPTEMBER 11 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#28 “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites?” (Matthew 22:18)

 SEPTEMBER 11  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#28 “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites?”  (Matthew 22:18)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer    

JESUS, each day as I awake to start another day, my mind turns to thoughts of this daily prayer to You and my soul is touched that You and the Father have made Yourself available to us 24/7/365-Forever! You Lord have never changed and we know You are the same Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow and that is a comforting thought, especially when I think that Your Character is based solely on WHO YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO BE and not on what this world of sinners chooses to do — Lord, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we are sexually immoral to a fault, our society is now killing our unborn children and we claim we have the “right” to decide by a majority vote the moral standard by which we desire to live in moral decay — and all along we reject the only solution to our growing problem — Your Forgiveness! Yet, You Lord continue to LOVE us and extend Your Invitation of Forgiveness and Salvation because that is WHO GOD CHOOSES TO BE! Lord Jesus, I know I fall short of Your Glory even on my best days and I fully understand that all my good deeds done by this defiled body are but as filthy rags so LORD JESUS, may I decrease and let You increase in my daily life and may I grow daily in Christ until the day that Your Righteousness will shine in my life instead of my wretched soul casting a dark shadow that surrounds a sin-filled life!   AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus has been greeted as the Son of David by the multitudes but the religious leaders were skeptical that this was the Messiah and therefore they started confronting Jesus trying to “expose” Him as an imposter but each “test”, Jesus used these “exams of His Character” to prove that He was the Chosen One and then used the circumstance to reveal another Truth of God. If we look at this next section <Matthew 22:15-40> we see that the religious rulers, scribes, and elders that were holding onto their “traditions” and the “doctrines of men” were blinded to the Truth that Jesus was God’s Son. Even though their “physical” eyes beheld Jesus doing “wonderful things” their “spiritual” eyes were blinded by their desires to maintain their lofty titles and important offices, hence they “plotted” against Jesus — but “how” they intended to catch Him was like trying to put out a fire with gasoline! So far the religious rulers have included the chief priests, the scribes, the elders, the Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Sadducees. Each of these “power and authority” groups had sent representatives which were “lawyers” and they were trying to use “the law”  to expose “The Law Giver” and instead of putting out the “fire” with their “legalist gasoline” they were actually fanning the flames! Jesus in this section not only proves He is the “Law Giver” and has come to “fulfill the Law and the Prophets”, Jesus also uses these attacks to introduce “THREE Spiritual Laws” as He answers each attack from these set out to prove Him a fake? The THREE Spiritual Laws are: Spiritual Law #1 — “Render unto God the things that are God’s things.”  (Matthew 22:21); Spiritual  Law #2 — “The Great I AM is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” (Matthew 22:32); and Spiritual  Law #3 — “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and also you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-40) Jesus introduces the THREE Spiritual Laws with a question directed at the religious rulers that had “plotted” against  Him: “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites?” (Matthew 22:18) The Holy Scriptures then documents how Jesus answered the questions of the Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Sadducees and their “legalist” attacks and used each situation to Teach the THREE Spiritual Laws. This is a good time for all of us to reflect on all the times that we as individuals and as a society have tried to “legislate morality”  according to our own selfish desires and blinded ourselves to the Truth of God that He is the Law Giver and not “one jot, or one tittle” of God’s Law will pass away until all the Law is fulfilled — IN GOD’S WAY and IN GOD’S TIMING — and when we realize that LAW is really the thing that belongs to God, then we will begin to uphold Spiritual Law #1 and “Render unto God the things that are God’s” and we will find ourselves healed of our “spiritual blindness” !!!