JULY 12 THE JESUS QUESTIONS
JQ#21 “What do you think about fish, taxes, lost sheep,
forgiveness, and your fellow servants?”
(Matthew 17:25, 18:12,33)
LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer
JESUS, Precious is that Name, the Name above all names, all praise
and honor go to the Name of Jesus. The Only Begotten of the Father,
yeah the only One of all the children of God that was able to live
a Perfect Life while in the flesh, and even to the point of death
at the end of His earthly Life, Jesus maintained that Perfection
even in dying such a cruel death on the Cross!
Jesus took His death and turned it into our Victory! Jesus,
You are Faithful to fulfill Your Promises to us and Your Word is Pure!
O Holy Spirit, my heart is yielded and my soul longs for Your Touch,
my mind yearns to be filled with Your Understanding and even
the most inward parts of my being begs for Your Salvation and Sanctification.
Teach me, guide me, and lift up my soul to the Father!
AMEN
THE JESUS QUESTIONS
Jesus always has a Purpose for every Question, and that single Purpose
is to reveal the Father to us, so why is Jesus spending so much
of His Effort in Teaching us about “sin”? Jesus asked JQ#21 in
Matthew 17:25 just after telling His disciples that
“The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men,
and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up.”
(Matthew 17:22)
and immediately Jesus jumps to asking:
“From whom do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes,
from their sons or from strangers?” (Matthew 17:25)
— or is this a “jump” going from talking about the resurrection
(being raised the third day) to the kings of the earth extracting “taxes”?
Jesus made a very interesting statement to Peter once Peter answered that the
“kings of the earth … take customs or taxes”
from “strangers” and not from their “sons” and
Jesus declared “Then the sons are free.”
(Matthew 17:26)
After Jesus made the “sons are free” statement
He performed the miracle with the “fish and taxes” which illustrated
that God wants us to continue in our daily lives and to trust Him to provide for us.
Then Jesus Teaches in Chapter 18 about “sin” by addressing our
worldly desire for “greatness” as expressed by a comment from
His own disciples.
Jesus replies to His disciples with this statement when the disciples asked Him
“who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:1)
——— Jesus answers
“Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted
…you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven…” (Matthew 18:2)
Then for the remainder of Chapter 18 Jesus is Teaching about “Sin” !?!?!?
These verses when viewed individually feel somewhat disjointed to me
and the amount of verses dedicated to “sin” seems out of proportion,
but then I read these passages as a whole and I see
God’s Master Plan of Salvation in Matthew 17:20 - 18:35.
When these passages are viewed as the Plan of Salvation
it becomes evident that God is serious
about resolving the sin problem!!!
To illustrate the Magnitude of God’s Compassion for a lost world,
Jesus spends His earthly ministry Teaching
“Repent … the kingdom of heaven is at hand…”
(see Matthew 3:2 and Matthew 4:17)
and He emphasizes that
God has prepared a heaven for those that
“repent” or are “converted” from their sin
and that God has also prepared a “hell”
for those that reject God.
Time and time again Jesus has stated that we must personally make
this decision that determines where we will spend our “eternity”
after our “(very brief) lifetime on earth” which begins with
our “physical” birth to an earthly mother and father. This “physical” lifetime
will be terminated either by our “physical” death on earth or our
“spiritual birth” into the “Spiritual kingdom of God”
to which Jesus alluded to with His
“the sons are free”
statement in Matthew 17:26.
So the Master Plan of Salvation is God
sending His Only Begotten Son to the earth to become flesh
so that Jesus can live a perfect life which will be
the ONLY acceptable Substitutionary Sacrifice
wholly acceptable to the Father and this “Acceptable Sacrifice”
will be a “Once for All” Sacrifice for All Sin.
Mankind is sinful and will be judged by a Just and Faithful God
who at the beginning of His creation declared the
“penalty of sin is death”.
As a sinner, we must admit our sin and then “repent” of our sin
and we will receive
God’s Gift of “Grace” and “Forgiveness”
for our sins because Jesus paid our debt to sin when He was
“betrayed into the hands of men … [and killed]”
God sealed His Promise by “Resurrecting Jesus”
from the grave on the “third day”!!!
Jesus has stated
His Divine Purpose was to “save that which was lost [in sin]”
(Matthew 18:11)
and so
our personal decision to “repent from sin” and “convert”
to being sons of God will determine where we will spend our eternity
——— we will either spend our eternity with God
or separated from Him and our eternity boils down to a simple question ———
“Do we believe God means what He says?”
