NOVEMBER 18 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#32 “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40)

 NOVEMBER 18  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#32 “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?”  (Matthew 26:40)

LIVING FOR JESUS - Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Blessed be the Name of Jesus, Name above all names, Lord of all lords, the Prince of Peace, the Son in whom the Father is well pleased and who the Father admonishes us: “Listen to Him”!!! Jesus, Jesus, Jesus … my Lord and my Salvation, may all that I do be a Glory to You and Honor Your Great Name, the only Name which can be called upon by a sinner for salvation and the only Name to bestow Mercy and Grace on the humble and contrite heart that repents and seeks the Peace that can only be found by following Your Ways and entering the Narrow Gate!   AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus announced that “…the Son of Man will be delivered up…” (Matthew 26:2) anointed with “…fragrant oil…for [His] burial…(Matthew 26:12) and then Matthew documents how Jesus was betrayed: “Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What are you willing to give me if I deliver Him to you?’ And they counted out to [Judas] thirty pieces of silver.” (Matthew 12:14-15) There is a Deep Lesson on the Sovereignty of God in these two verses that is a very revealing insight to both God and mankind! This Deep Insight in Matthew 12:14-15 is always overlooked as is the same insight found in Job 1:8 and Job 2:3 in which God initiates a conversation with Satan. “Then the LORD said to Satan…” (Job 1:8) and again, “Then the LORD said to Satan…” (Job 2:3) and our first worldly question is “What is God doing talking to the devil?” When we read the passage in Matthew 12:14-15 — we mistakenly give the devil credit again as our worldly misguided wisdom tells us that Judas Iscariot is possessed by the devil and it is the devil making Judas betray Jesus!  The Deep Truth of God in both these passages is simply that GOD IS IN CONTROL!!! In the book of Job we tend to look at the suffering of Job and in the passage in Matthew where Judas accepts 30 pieces of silver we focus on the suffering of Jesus on the cross because of the “betrayal” but in both instances we miss the Sovereignty of God and we never consider that the Suffering of Job and the Betrayal of Jesus was Planned by God —“before the foundation of the earth” (see Revelation 13:8 and 1 Peter 1:20) — with the Ultimate Purpose found in John 3:16 — these are not random attacks by the devil, they are scripted responses to the plan of God to bring Salvation to mankind!!! Satan was approached by God and asked to consider Job and through Job’s suffering we see that there was nothing Satan could do to Job that God could not make good in Job’s life and we see in the Crucifixion that there is nothing the world can do to the living that God cannot turn into His Glory. Satan took his best shot at the Cross and convinced the world to crucify the very Son of God but God proved His Sovereignty by raising Jesus the third day and Jesus revealed the cross was the culmination of God’s Plan when Jesus declared from the cross “It is Finished!!!”  Yet though Jesus was betrayed by His own, beaten beyond recognition, crucified, dead and buried, the Power of God and His Supreme Sovereignty over Life and Death was demonstrated on the Third Day when God Resurrected His Only Begotten Son in victory over the best that Satan and the evil world could come up with!!! God has ALWAYS HAD A PLAN FOR THE GOOD OF MAN and Satan is powerless ——— the TRUTH OF GOD is that Satan cannot do anything without God’s approval!  Satan cannot thwart God’s Plan of Salvation because the devil knew that he was totally defeated when he heard Jesus cry from the cross “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which Matthew translates as “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46) Can you imagine Satan at Golgotha first giving high fives to his demons when God’s Son, hanging on the cross, shedding His last drop of blood was asking from that cross why the Father had forsaken His Only Begotten Son?!?! That scene of the jubilation of Satan is what the world makes us see, as we see the suffering of Job at the hand of Satan, and as we see Christ dying a cruel death because Satan made Judas betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver ——— BUT GOD HAS A PLAN ——— and when one looks at GOD’S PLAN through the eyes of GOD’S GRACE and is not blinded by the lies of Satan and the deception of worldly desires we can see that God is in CONTROL and that everything is GOING ACCORDING TO GOD’S PLAN!!! I can imagine that Satan was in the midst of a high fives when God let Satan see the TRUTH that God had planned for Judas to betray Jesus who was INNOCENT and that JESUS WOULD SHED HIS INNOCENT BLOOD AS AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE FOR THE REMISSION OF SIN and now that God had gone so far as to abandon Jesus on the cross to accomplish HIS PLAN OF SALVATION that Satan knew that JESUS WAS THE VICTOR AND NOT THE VICTIM!!! God had already demonstrated the POWER of LIFE OVER DEATH and at that moment Satan KNEW that what Jesus had stated on several occasions leading up to the cross would become a reality and in only THREE DAYS God would RESURRECT HIS SON from the GRAVE AND DEATH_——— AND IT WAS ALL PLANNED!!! “What about you — do you believe God is that powerful?”