MARCH 27 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#11 “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” (Matthew 11:7)

 

MARCH 27  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  

JQ#11 “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” 

(Matthew 11:7)

LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Lord, I come before You this morning with so much  “thanksgiving”

 in my heart that I fear my words will once again fall short of glorifying You,

 for my words are from a finite intellect trying to glorify the 

Infinite Knowledge, Mercy, and Grace of Jesus Christ!!!  

Lord indeed Your Ways are higher than my ways and Your Thoughts higher

 than my thoughts but Lord look again into my heart and may the Holy Spirit

 speak my “heartfelt-thanksgiving” in words of praise worthy of the Honor due You.

 Lord Jesus, I pray again these words first prayed from my heart in 2004:

 “Lord, strengthen my resolve to make every day-to-day choice 

with the desire to live my life to glorify God!”    

AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus, used the context of this simple Question to make it of Divine Significance

 by the fact that Jesus asked this Question “to the multitudes” (Matthew 11:7a) 

just after declaring Himself to be the Messiah to the disciples of John the Baptist.

 The Question alerts us to where our “focus” should be as we try to answer His

 Teaching Question about our “spiritual expectations of God”. 

Jesus began His Teaching of the multitudes with this question: 

“What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” (Matthew 11:7b). 

We know that it is a Teaching Question because Matthew states in verse 1

 of Chapter 11 that Jesus had “finished commanding His twelve disciples” 

and that Jesus had 

“departed from there to teach and to preach in their cities” 

(Matthew 11:1) 

hence we can know that Jesus intends to “teach and to preach” —

 and through our study of the previous JESUS Questions we know that 

His Questions are all rhetorical for 

Jesus is God and therefore is ALL-KNOWING, 

so we can come quickly to an understanding that Jesus, being ALL-KNOWING,

 does not ask Questions to gain knowledge but rather, Jesus asks Questions

 to get us focused on a specific topic in order for us to see the

 

Truth of God that Jesus Teaches with each Question/Lesson. 

With JQ#11 Jesus is asking us to stop and consider all our “expectations” 

and specifically our “spiritual expectations of the Messiah”. We can easily

 paraphrase JQ#11 from “what did you go out…to see?” to 

“what are your [spiritual] expectations?” 

and since Jesus had just detailed His list of 

“Divine” accomplishments proving Himself to be the “MESSIAH”,

 one should be able to make a direct correlation from the 

“works” Jesus performed in the name and from the Power of God 

with how the prophets and the Holy Scriptures had described the Messiah, 

plus John the Baptist declaring himself to be a “messenger of God” sent to 

declare to Israel that the Messiah is soon coming,

 and then John, at the JORDAN, seeing Jesus declared: 

“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” 

(John 1:29) 

one would wonder how all Israel was not proclaiming loudly that 

Jesus IS the MESSIAH!!!  

What Jesus Himself had accomplished in His ministry so far 

and had been publicly witnessed by the multitudes, 

ONLY the Messiah could accomplish what Jesus had been doing! 

There had never been anyone before Jesus that so completely

 fulfilled the requirements of the Messiah and there has been no one

 after Jesus that has fulfilled even one or two, let alone 

one man (JESUS OF NAZARETH) that fulfilled ALL 

of those Divine Attributes 

belonging Uniquely to the Messiah! 

Jesus by His Divine accomplishments proved He is the Messiah 

so why didn’t those that saw 

Jesus performing miracle after miracle including healing, 

casting out demons, and resurrecting the dead, 

and many, many, more signs believe that He was the Messiah

 without Him having to “lay it out” for them??? 

My pastor Steve McDonald uses the phrase: 

“Jesus lays the cookies on the bottom shelf so everyone can reach them” 

and Jesus had been performing Divine acts unique to Messiah so why couldn’t

 the multitudes who had seen, heard, and experienced Jesus in the flesh

 understand by their own observation that 

Jesus IS the Son of God and God’s Messiah? 

The same is true today because each generation has had God revealed to them,

 and today we have the Holy Bible that “lays the cookies on the bottom shelf” for us,

 so why don’t we reach out and listen to Jesus and give Him a serious personal

 answer to this serious personal Question Jesus asks each of us as individuals,

 “What are your spiritual expectations of Jesus?”  

Why don’t you take a bite of the cookie being offered 

and understand Psalm 34:8 

“Taste and see that the Lord is good…”? 

MARCH 26 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#11 “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” (Matthew 11:7)

 

MARCH 26  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  

JQ#11 “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” 

(Matthew 11:7)

LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer   

JESUS, Lord I give You and the Holy Spirit Praise for the wonderful lesson

 on “Spiritual Expectations about Easter” that You Taught in our

 3rd/4th Grade Sunday School class using John 3:16. Lord it is so exciting

 to see You move and as the teacher of these really bright young Christians

 I feel really “Blessed” to be learning about You through them!  

Lord, may I never lose sight that You and the Holy Spirit are the Master Teachers

 and always keep me aware OF THOSE ANOINTED LESSONS when You

 have taken over so that I will not get in the way of THE SPIRIT’S TEACHINGS,

 especially one that Taught 3rd and 4th Graders both “how” and “why”

 they should “share” the Good News about the True Meaning of Easter! 

Lord, how my heart leaped as each one took their turn describing Easter

 as the Resurrection, all Praise, Glory, and Honor to the Holy Spirit 

for empowering them and to the Risen Lord for dying and defeating death

 that we may LIVE!    

AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

JESUS always asks a simple Question which can immediately be rephrased

 as a Divine Spiritual Inquiry which is the case of JQ#11 which can be 

written as:  “What are your spiritual expectations of Jesus?” (Matthew 11:7).

 The actual JESUS Question asked in Mathew 11:7 is from a series of 

JESUS Questions asking basically the same thing as we read these 

Questions in Matthew 11:7-9. The important context of the Question was

 that the disciples of John the Baptist had come to question Jesus with

 the intent of determining if Jesus was the “Coming One” which is the

 sermon topic that John the Baptist had been preaching about in the wilderness. 

The multitudes had been traveling out into the wilderness to hear John the Baptist

 preach “Repentance” and the soon coming “Christ”.  

John was considered by all Israel as a prophet and even the Jewish

 priests and leaders acknowledged that John was preaching in the Power of God!

  We read in John 1:19-20 

“Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests 

and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ [John] 

confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ’” 

(John 1:19-20) 

From this passage we can determine that John had been preaching that the

 kingdom of heaven was at hand and that the long awaited Christ was “coming” 

and John’s message was so powerful that all Israel was talking again 

about the “Coming Messiah”. John’s Message about the “Coming Messiah” 

was so powerful that it had gained the attention of the Jewish leaders

 in Jerusalem because John was the first prophet speaking the Word of God 

in Israel since Malachi, the last prophet of God who had spoken hundreds

 of years ago — God’s prophets had been silent now for about 400 years

 so John appears on the scene declaring 

“REPENT” and “the Messiah is Coming soon” 

and now everyone is “expectant” that the Messiah has come 

just as the prophecies of old had promised!  

After John had “confessed” that he was not the Christ, 

John then quoted the prophet Isaiah: 

“[John] said: ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: 

‘make straight the way of the Lord’” 

(John 1:23 & Isaiah 40:3) 

So when Jesus lists His earthly accomplishments to the disciples of John,

 Jesus was in effect telling everyone that because of “His works” 

that He had been doing among the people of Israel that Jesus was

 indeed the “Messiah” that Israel had been “expecting”!!!  

The important thing to note here is that Jesus lists the events that proved 

He was indeed the Messiah but immediately after stating the 

Divine Truth that JESUS IS THE MESSIAH 

that Jesus turned and asked this Question to enlighten the multitudes — 

“What did you expect?” (Matthew 11:7-9A) 

and then added this statement about what they had expected to find:

 “A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and more than a prophet.”

 (Matthew 11:9B)  

As we read the Gospels and throughout the entire New Testament,

 Jesus is doing everything the prophecies said the Messiah would do 

and yet it took His death, burial, and Resurrection before even Jesus’ own

 disciples believed that Jesus was Truly the Son of God, the Messiah. 

The same problem exists in the Church today as we declare 

like a modern day Thomas : 

“…unless I see in His hands the print of the nails…

I will not believe…” (John 20:25) 

Jesus knew there would be doubt and He is Teaching in JQ#11 that our

 “spiritual expectations” of Him will be guiding our belief about 

“who” Jesus will be in our lives! 

There is nothing more that Jesus needs to “do” to prove 

He IS the Messiah 

so the problem is simply a matter of our “spiritual expectations 

of the Messiah and our Belief/Unbelief” —

Jesus is Teaching “us” here that if we are “expecting” a knight in 

white armor riding in on a horse leading a great army that we may

 actually miss the “real deal” of the True King riding in on a donkey— 

and the fault does not rest with God, the fault rests entirely on our 

“spiritual expectations of Jesus” — 

Jesus IS the Son of God - so, 

what are your “expectations” of Him??? 

SPIRITUAL TRUTH: THE MESSIAH IS WHO GOD HIMSELF DECLARES

 IS THE MESSIAH AND WHOM GOD ANOINTS WITH THE POWER OF GOD

 TO DO THE WORK OF THE MESSIAH AS GOD HAD PLANNED AND 

PURPOSED THE MESSIAH TO DO — THE MESSIAH IS NOT THE

 MESSIAH BECAUSE HE MEETS THE WORLD’S EXPECTATIONS OF

 HIM BUT THE MESSIAH IS THE MESSIAH BECAUSE HE MEETS

 GOD’S EXPECTATIONS — JESUS AND ONLY JESUS HAS 

FULFILLED GOD’S EXPECTATIONS OF THE MESSIAH — 

AND THAT’S THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH,

 AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!!!