NOVEMBER 16 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#32 “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40)

 NOVEMBER 16  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#32 “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?”  (Matthew 26:40)

LIVING FOR JESUS - Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Lord and Redeemer, let every word from my lips be filled with praise and thanksgiving for the One who suffered and died for me! Lord I thank You that even when I was lost so deep in my sin that I could not find my way through the darkness that Your Light and Your Love brought me back to Your Way! Lord forgive me of my many shortcomings and keep my heart focused on Your Will and not my will which so often goes the way of the world and worldly desires. Praise, Glory, and Honor, Truth, and Life are Yours and I can only be thankful that You are Gracious to us in spite of our many iniquities and I am also thankful that because of Your Great Compassion You shower Your Mercy on a faithless and perverse generation, help me Lord with my unbelief.     AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus has announced that He was to be “delivered up to be crucified” (Matthew 26:2) and now He has only two days left before the prophecy of the Great Sacrifice of the Passover Lamb of God is fulfilled. Jesus throughout His Ministry has Taught the way of life we are to live in order that we may “inherit the kingdom of Heaven”!   Jesus has painted a very clear picture of what the future of the unbeliever is as well as warning that “all the nations” will be judged — either we have chosen to “believe” and follow the Great Shepherd to the Kingdom of Heaven where the believer will find “green pastures and still waters” or we will be separated out as “goats” during the Final Judgement when God “divides the sheep [believers] from the goats [unbelievers]” (Matthew 25:32)  Jesus illustrated the punishment very graphically as He said that at the Final Judgement the “King” will declare to the unbelievers, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels…and the [unbeliever] will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous [believers] into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:41,46) The Lesson to be learned from the “sequence” of Jesus Teaching about the Final Judgement where the “righteous” inherit the Kingdom of Heaven and eternal life and the unrighteous are cursed to a “everlasting punishment” that immediately Jesus announces He will “be crucified” which is the same as when at the beginning of creation God recognized the problem of darkness and lack of purpose in the world in Genesis 1:2 “the earth was without form, and void and darkness was on the face of the deep…and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said , ‘Let there be Light’” (Genesis 1:2-3).  Jesus, The Son of God, has recognized the problem that “darkness” and sin have blinded the unrighteous and He is fulfilling God’s command to “let there be Light” as Jesus knows that He must execute God’s Plan of Salvation and must suffer and die for the sins of the world as Jesus Sheds His Precious Blood when He is “crucified” though He is Innocent!!! Jesus knows that His Death is The Plan of Salvation for all mankind for He has repeatedly announced that God will “raise Him” on “the third day”! As we look at these last “two days” before that Most Blessed Event of the Sacrifice of God’s  Passover Lamb that we should study carefully these last Words and Lessons of the Chosen One. Therefore let us look at the sequence of events leading up to when on the Cross that Jesus “yielded up His Spirit” (Matthew 27:50) for if we study “how and why” Jesus died, we will declare as did those who watched Him die, “Truly this [IS] the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54)