Layman's Pulpit

 JANUARY  16  THE JESUS QUESTIONS   Introduction-16: Lessons, Lifestyle, and Parables of Jesus: JQ#1-JQ#33  (Matthew 1:1 thru 3:17)

LIVING FOR JESUS - Daily Prayer 

JESUS, JESUS, JESUS — there will be a time when “every tongue” will confess that You are LORD! “Every tongue” takes in a lot of territory and is all inclusive of “every” one that has a “tongue” will use it to confess that Jesus is Lord — Mohammed will confess it, Buddha will confess it, and more importantly, each individual personally will confess it as EACH WILL stand before God!!!  It doesn’t get any closer to home than when we see prophesy being fulfilled in our own lives — but there is one small caveat; this confession comes at the “Judgement” and confessing the Name of Jesus is not a “ticket-to-get-into-heaven” phrase — the Bible states that everyone must stand before God and make an account of our actions and thoughts toward God! It is our thoughts and actions while we were living on earth that will “condemn or commend” us during our “Final Judgment” in Heaven. Our thoughts and actions while living lead to us to being “condemned to” either a burning hell separated from God or will “commend us” to God, to live with God in Heaven for eternity!!!  After “every tongue” has stood trial for the lives we lived while on earth and we are standing before God, KNOWING HE IS GOD, we will accept our reward or punishment (earned for what we did with the Name of Jesus while we were on earth and breathing God’s air) — and before we leave His Presence we will all stand before God in Heaven and receive our rewards/punishments that were established by our actions on earth that declared “JESUS IS THE LORD OF MY LIFE”!!!      AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus so far has been shown to be the Messiah by circumstances of His “Virgin Birth” and through His lineage back to King David. Upon the announcement of His Birth to King Herod, Herod tried to thwart God’s Plan by killing all male children two and under in the City of David, Bethlehem where Jesus was born. Herod, while trying to protect his throne, unwittingly fulfilled yet more prophecies of the Messiah. In the 3rd Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel of Jesus Christ, Jesus Himself begins to demonstrate by His Own Actions that He is the Messiah! Matthew starts Chapter 3 by introducing the “Star Witness” of Jesus Christ — John the Baptist — John himself was the fulfillment of yet another prophecy: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness; prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3) Matthew writes of John: “In those days [when Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod] John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” (Matthew 3:1-2) Matthew covered enough material about the “Virgin Birth” of Jesus and circumstances that could not have been orchestrated or controlled by Jesus and His disciples that proved that it could not have been a “fabricated” story or any form of “conspiracy” for the “facts” surrounding Jesus were a matter of public record and the “Virgin Birth” was announced by His earthly parents (facing the penalty of death for blasphemy) before He was born, remember also that Mary and Joseph made their confession while Mary was pregnant even though it could have meant their death — Mary and Joseph had nothing to “gain” from declaring the “Virgin Birth” account and risked being made complete “outcasts” from the Synagogue and their community which was the worst thing that could happen to a young Jewish couple so why would they insist that Jesus was the Messiah by virtue of His “Virgin Birth”, and they claimed this truth not according to any less authority than God Himself through the angel Gabriel!!! When John the Baptist comes upon the scene he was “preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” but again this historical fact was part of Jewish history BEFORE Jesus began His earthly ministry — therefore John the Baptist and his “history” is still another “fact” that Jesus and His disciples could not fabricate and is yet another “fact” that can be directly related to prophecy written hundreds of years before Jesus began His public ministry! Of Divine Significance is that the prophecy of Isaiah about the forerunner of the Messiah was written in the 8th Century B.C. and specifically states “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” and “make straight in the desert” and the voice in the desert wilderness was to “prepare the way of the LORD” (Isaiah 40:3) so one must answer some obvious questions such as why would God choose a desert wilderness and not the public square in Jerusalem to announce the arrival of the “Anointed One” and also why would any person randomly or purposefully chose to clothe himself in camel hair, go into the desert wilderness, eat locust and honey, and then preach “repentance” and to declare “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” !?!?!? You can’t make up things like these and present them as facts and not get blown out of the water by the existing authorities, especially if the story includes facts that fly in the face of all tradition and existing laws which could result in that person’s life imprisonment and/or their death?? Matthew’s accounts leave us with two  obvious questions (1) why would a young couple risk death just to claim a “virgin” birth and (2) why would one man go out into the desert and risk his life for some locusts and honey — it makes no sense unless they were driven by a “force” or a ”power” greater than their fear of death!?!? The “obvious” answer is that they are driven by God’s Master Plan and that the Plan itself is more important than “life and death” — God’s Master Plan is about “Eternal Life” in the presence of God Himself and is the only reasonable explanation for all that appears in the Holy Scriptures that establish through prophecy and innocent lives the validity of Jesus being the Messiah!!! Just think on why and when these things occurred to fulfill prophecies in the Scriptures that were written hundreds of year before the events occurred and you will not find a better explanation than prophecy, its giving and fulfillment, is part of God’s Master Plan!!!  The really Good News is that THERE IS A MASTER PLAN for “MANKIND’S SALVATION” and that the ONE that AUTHORED the MASTER PLAN is the CREATOR of ALL and is in CONTROL OF EVERYTHING!!!  When one reads the Bible from the viewpoint that EVERY WORD is DIVINELY INSPIRED and the Holy Bible is GOD’S MASTER PLAN OF REDEMPTION that was already in place “before the foundation of the earth”, then one can see how important it is that we read God’s Word — for indeed His Word is Truth — that’s why His Words are called The Holy Scriptures for only TRUTH IS HOLY!!!