Category: Daily Devotionals

SPIRITUAL VERSUS PHYSICAL

They answered him, “Abraham is our father.”  Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.  This is not what Abraham did.”  John 8:39-40

Jesus’ words were often misunderstood because the person who heard them thought He was speaking about the physical world, not the spiritual one.  The woman at the well thought the water Jesus referred to was the water at the bottom of the well.  Nicodemus thought that the new birth Jesus spoke of was about a physical re-birth through a woman’s womb.  Now, the Pharisees are suffering from lack of insight because they make the same mistake.  They refer to themselves as physical descendants of Abraham when Jesus is talking about spiritual relations.  Are they Abraham’s spiritual children, children of belief, faith, and obedience. Continue reading “Spiritual Versus Physical” →

WHAT IS AT STAKE

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.”  John 7:37-38

Part of the ceremony for the feasts of Tabernacles was for the Jews to bring water from the pool of Siloam and pour it in a silver basin near the altar where sacrifices were made.  On this last day of the festival, it was evident to Jesus that His people had poured out water, observed a ceremonial ritual that was loaded with meaning, yet they were unchanged on the inside.  In this context, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty, come.  I will be living water to you.” Continue reading “What Is At Stake” →

A LITMUS TEST FOR TRUTH

“If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.”  John 7:17

Jesus’ words grated against the Pharisees for many reasons.  One was their unwillingness to obey what He said.  They set themselves up to be judges of His words, not understanding that only doing God’s will brings understanding to the commandments.  The British preacher F.W.Robertson said that “obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge.” If any man or woman is willing to obey, they shall understand the truth behind the action.  There is no substitute for application. Continue reading “A Litmus Test For Truth” →

A WALKING CONTRADICTION

Did not Moses give you the law?  Yet none of you keeps the law.  Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?  John 7:19

The Pharisees had been criticizing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath and other issues as well.  They did not recognize Him as the Son of God and in their blindness, rose up to pass judgment.  They thought way too highly of themselves.  Jesus points out here that they are a contradiction.  He tells them that they love to quote Moses and the prophets and yet they don’t keep the law that Moses passed down to them. Continue reading “A Walking Contradiction” →

THE DELIVERY MAN

“My teaching is not mine but His who sent Me.  The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory but the one who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true.  In him there is no falsehood.”  John 7:16,18

Our son, Ryan, lives four hours away in another city.  If some friends of ours were going to travel through his home town and made the offer to stop and see him, Ron and I would be asking them to take him a bag of homemade goodies as well as deliver a message or two from home.  We would tell them what to say and trust that their delivery would be identical to the way they heard it from us.  They would not be visiting Ryan on their own authority, with their own message, but would come to him on behalf of us, his parents.  The message on their lips is our message even though they are the ones delivering it.   Continue reading “The Delivery Man” →

JESUS FEELS REJECTION

So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”  Simon Peter answered him, “To whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  John 6:67-68

This passage highlights Peter’s amazing confession of faith in the midst of vast unbelief.  This morning though, I wondered about what was going on inside of Jesus, not Peter.  Did he feel the rejection of the crowd?  Was he hurt that most everyone turned away?  Did He have to go to His Father in prayer for comfort?  Did he cry?  If this seems like a stretch, what kind of a person could enjoy the warm enthusiasm of a group, a group made up of acquaintances and friends, and then feel nothing when they decided to turn their backs on him?  No one I know.   Continue reading “Jesus Feels Rejection” →

THE GIFT AND THE GIVER

And for this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.  John 5:16

The men who made up the Jewish Sanhedrin (the religious ruling council of the Jews) took one of their jobs seriously.  They were to investigate any new teacher who came along lest that man was a false prophet and would lead other Jews astray.  They had already investigated John the Baptist.  Now, Jesus was also under their scrutiny because He was healing some people on the Sabbath.  A job, important in theory, had turned into a prison of regulations.  What was meant to protect the faith morphed into the makings of a holy war against the One they were ultimately trying to serve.  Jesus was God, the One for whom they were so zealous.

A holy calling can easily go awry and work against the kingdom instead of for it.  The God we started out to honor and glorify is the One who is ultimately dishonored.  The tragedy in the story about the Jew’s persecution of Jesus is that they served God but didn’t recognize Jesus.  These were the ones who devoted their lives to religious duty, who should have seen the first hints of deity and bowed down and worshipped.  Can the religious today miss the activity of Jesus among them?  I fear so.  Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “If Jesus were to walk into any of our churches, how many would recognize Him?”

How does a calling get perverted?  When I attempt to live it out without daily revelation.  Like Solomon, I must declare that I am but a little child without the wisdom necessary to carry out my monumental God-given assignment.  I know that without prayer, study, and meditation, I won’t have the tools necessary to live successfully.  If I become self-impressed by my education and experience, believing myself to be brilliant enough to figure things out without daily prayer, I will turn into the likes of the Sanhedrin.  Whom I started out to serve will be the One I wound.

Adam and Eve sinned in the garden when they abandoned revelation in favor of knowledge.  By eating of the tree, they decided to study the course of ‘the knowledge of good and evil’ and rule the garden by their intellect.  God’s offer to walk with them in the cool of the morning and give them guidance was abandoned.  They believed their enemy – that they could be like God through eating of the tree – and rule by their own ingenuity.  We’ve been twisting religion ever since.

The places I believe I am the most wise may be the very places I am in most need of Your wisdom.  I come to You as a humble child, once again.  Teach me to rule – your way.  Amen

 

WHERE CAN YOU PURCHASE IT?

Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Phillip, “Where shall we buy bread, so that these people may eat?”  John 6:5

Feeding 5,000 hungry people is no small thing.  Because it was in a wilderness, no one had a kitchen to call home base.  There was no open market in the vicinity and even if there was, no one had two hundred day’s wages to buy enough food to feed that many people.  What was the disciple’s solution to the crowd’s hunger?  Send the people away.  I can understand their reasoning, can’t you?  Humanly, that was the only solution.  Make the problem disappear from view.   Continue reading “Where Can You Purchase It?” →

WIND BEHIND THE MANNA

“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but  what are they for so many?”  John 6:9

Jesus’ plan has always been to use His people to do His work.  A boy provided the meal, simple and meager as it was. Jesus touched it and then the disciples distributed it to the people.  The meal would have been nothing without Jesus’ miraculous touch.

Continue reading “Wind Behind The Manna” →

MIS-JUDGED KINGSHIP

Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again into the hills by himself.  John.6: 15

After Jesus fed five thousand people, He was so extremely popular that the crowd wanted to hail Him as King.  But Jesus, knowing He had come to die and His Kingdom was not yet of this world, had to withdraw to a private place to escape this public ceremony. Continue reading “Mis-judged Kingship” →