JULY 11 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)

 

JULY 11  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, You Lord have done all that could be done and there could be

 no greater expression of Love than the Gift that the Father 

gave to the world in the form of Self Sacrifice for the sake of others.

 Lord it will always be a Mystery why You became flesh 

and allowed Yourself to be tempted in the flesh in all ways

 that we are tempted in the world?!?  

Why would the King of kings and Lord of lords humble Himself

 and allow His creation to crucify Him?

 Lord, instead of questioning “Why” would God choose this path 

for mankind to enter into eternity and unbroken fellowship with the Father,

 let me Lord give You Thanks, Praise, and Glory 

for without You showing us the Way, we would remain lost in our sin. 

Give us this day our daily bread — for Yours is the kingdom, 

and the Power, and the 

Glory FOREVER!!!    

AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus IS the Master Teacher and being God He has 

Infinite Knowledge and Wisdom. Jesus used “His Mastery of Words”

 to Teach Lessons-within-a-Lesson and in this section in 

Matthew chapters 17 and 18 Jesus has already used two common

 everyday words that everyone understands — “fish” and “taxes” 

— simple little words BUT with our limited finite insight we would never

 put together in the way Jesus puts them together to Teach

 us a Lesson-within-a-Lesson and reveal God Himself! 

Jesus actually performed a miracle with Peter and a fish to explain

 the “Provisions” of God and while in the process of Teaching us

 about God’s Provisions for us, Jesus Taught us that

 God is not limited in His Power In any way and 

GOD IS the SUPREME POWER 

in the universe, and also that God has chosen to use that Supreme Power

 to take care of our daily needs by controlling circumstances in our daily lives

 to produce a miracle — these two words are “fish” and “taxes” 

and in only 4 verses (Matthew 17:24-27) Jesus reveals 

some amazing characteristics of God. 

If we look at the behavior of God in this passage and in reading 

the following passages in Chapter 18 we can learn Lesson

 after Lesson and could spend days just reading these passages

 and contemplating God and wonder “why” God would

 go through all the trouble to perform miracles in the first place, 

let alone understanding “how” God is able to perform miracles at all! 

Once you start thinking about the “Powers” of God you begin 

to wonder “Why” God cares about us at all, 

especially when He spends so much time Teaching us that we are sinners?

 The very definition of 

“sin” is “disobeying God” 

— so why would the Father God send His Only Begotten Son 

down to earth from heaven (where Jesus is a Third-Part of the Trinity of God)

 to give up His Divinity and Unlimited Power in heaven to be born flesh (John 1:14)

 and blood on the earth and dwell among a world that is so disobedient to God? 

Jesus spent His earthly life living a simple life, He did not hold any office

 of distinction, He did not have any earthly possessions,

 and He dedicated Himself to Teaching sinners how to solve their sin problem

 and the earthly life of Jesus was terminated by

 the Greatest Lesson ever Taught about God,

 “For [the Father] made [the Son] who knew no sin 

to be sin for us, that we might become 

the righteousness of God in [Jesus].” 

(2 Corinthians 5:21) 

So why does Jesus spend so much time Teaching us that 

we are sinners — the answer is because His Mission was to teach us

 the “problem of our sin” and then present us with the 

“solution to the problem of our sin”

— the successful resolution of our sin problem on earth will be rewarded

 with eternal fellowship with God in heaven, completely free from sin but 

if the problem of sin is not resolved in our lives, 

then the consequence of our sin will be to spend an eternity 

in “hell fire” where we will be forever separated from God 

who sent His Son to save us from that 

hell where we will always know that our eternal agony is because

 we chose to sin against God ——— if we reject God 

then by our own choice we will live eternally in a burning hell 

knowing it was our sin that separated us from God 

and it is that knowledge of our sin that is the fuel 

that causes the fires of hell to burn so hot!!! 

We cannot explain why 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” 

(Genesis 1:1)

  in the first place or why God allowed “sin” to enter into His Perfect Creation

 and certainly we can’t explain why God would send 

His Only Begotten Son to Sacrifice Himself on a cruel cross

 to pay the penalty for OUR SIN — but 

the real question is: 

“Now that you know that “Sin IS the Problem” 

and that “Jesus IS the Solution” 

what are you going to do about it, 

will you continue disobeying God 

and die in your sin and spend eternity separated from God 

or will you obey God 

and “Listen to Jesus” 

and accept the Gift of Eternal Life of Fellowship with God?”

JULY 10 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)

 

JULY 10  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 I turn each morning to Your Word and look to the rising sun

 as Your Promise to never leave us nor forsake us. 

Lord Jesus, my prayer today is that I can share this “Peace-in-knowing-You”

 with others that You will place in my path today. Make me mindful

 that whatever circumstance I find myself in 

that I will have Your Peace with me always. 

If I don’t share Your Peace with those that don’t know You, then that 

becomes a lose-lose-lose situation, they lose because they don’t have You,

 they lose because without You they can’t have Your Peace, 

and I lose for I lost an opportunity to grow closer to You by sharing You

 and Your Peace with the world that is hurting so much 

because the world has turned from The WORD of GOD! 

Forgive me when I fail to share the sweet fragrance of

 Your Love and Peace in my life with others 

as You have commanded.    

AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus does not Teach us the same Lesson over and over just so that

 He can hear Himself talk. Jesus who is both Infinite and Divine 

cannot possibly need to beat our brow for His sake, so when 

He attacks a problem again and again we must take note and make

 every effort to learn what He is Teaching. 

First we must consider the obvious and ask ourselves

 

“Why would a Deity with Infinite Knowledge 

forfeit His Deity to become flesh 

and suffer and die at the hands of sinners?” 

 

This is a Mystery of God that can only be answered by God Himself

 but even if we never get the answer in our lifetime we should not be

 so foolish as to conclude that because God does not “explain Himself”

 in terms that our limited intellect can comprehend, that we should

 decide that God Himself has no relevance in our life!

 God has revealed Himself as He wants us to know Him 

from our earthly viewpoint so that we can come to a 

“spiritual understanding” of God 

that will open the door to our “eternal” future. 

I do not have to know how gravity works or be able to explain 

all the physics associated with gravity to know that gravity exists. 

Today’s world tells us that God does not exist and that is supposed 

to be the “Truth” because they have been given a degree in some

 scientific discipline by some university that has a very high tuition? 

Both God and gravity defies scientific explanation but we accept gravity

 because we have felt it working in our daily lives. We say that gravity 

was “discovered” by Sir Isaac Newton when an apple fell on his head 

but fail to see the Truth that gravity existed BEFORE it was “discovered”

 (first, if something does not exist, it cannot be discovered, 

and second, if gravity didn’t exist before it was “discovered” 

then what made the apple fall in the first place?) 

and secondly, even though it was “discovered” it has never been fully 

explained, but even though science cannot explain gravity, 

our lives are still impacted by gravity and we simply could not exist without it.

 We know gravity is “real” because we can see the physical results 

of gravity such as a falling apple or something so simple as a pencil

 laying quietly on a table — take away gravity and that pencil 

and the table will be floating around in the absence of gravity 

and that is a picture of our world without God holding us “spiritually” in place,

 we are just floating aimlessly around in space and we are at the mercy

 of others and we’ll go in the direction of the latest “push” from 

the powers that are telling us God doesn’t exist and is not relevant in our lives.

 God is real and can be proven very simply, 

God can be felt just as real as an apple that falls from the tree 

but we have to have ourselves in the apples path to feel it 

and to feel God we must place ourself in His Path. 

Simply look for Him and His Spirit will touch your heart. 

Just like our physical body is aware of the presence of gravity, 

the “spiritual” part of our being will know when it is in the Presence of God. 

God is an unexplained Spirit and even though it can not be comprehended

 by our limited physical observations, the Spirit of God is to our soul 

what gravity is to our body, the Spirit of God keeps us grounded 

in eternity just like gravity keeps our bodies grounded to this earth 

on which we temporarily reside.  

The Truth of God is that both gravity and God work on us on a personal 

basis without the explanation of the scientific community 

and are governed not by man’s laws but by God Himself. 

To entertain the possibility that God does not exist is to allow others

 to control the “spiritual gravity” in your life and I personally don’t want

 those that seek personal power over others to control what they can’t explain,

 and that goes for both gravity, which by the way it is imperative 

that I keep in touch with gravity on a personal basis without having to wait

 on some lawyer or politician telling me how to use my personal gravity 

and the same is true for my “spiritual gravity” which I do not want to 

have to wait on some lawyer or politician telling me how to use God

 who they can’t explain either! 

God is revealed by gravity and we must make our own “discovery” 

and admit that if we can explain God or not, 

GOD EXISTS 

——— how else do we explain the things that no scientist 

will ever be able to explain such as the universe around us 

and the miracle of life itself that we have observed which can 

only be explained by the True Existence of a Supreme Power 

———  God’s UNEXPLAINABLE Understanding and Power 

define God Himself !!! 

There is only One True Eternal Creator God 

and all else is simply His creation ——— 

God told Moses “I AM WHO I AM” 

and that is all the explanation that we need 

to understand both gravity and God ——— 

God has declared it, therefore it is, “deal with it”!!!