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For I know the plans I have for you,declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jer 29:11 |
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| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for collecting daily manna), make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Today's Passage : Today's Passage:Subjecta:Children of Abraham [1] Bible Verse:John 8:31-41 "So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” 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. You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.”" Message:
In this passage, the group of listeners is restricted to those who have come to believe in Christ. Thus, although the questions may seem penetrating or even challenging, they are not; they are rather questions posed by people who are truly struggling to understand Christ, against their lifelong background of Mosaic teaching in the Old Testament.
The Jews had frequently been bodily enslaved in the past. Yet, through all the dispersals and conquests, they had held onto their identity by their odd combination of race—the literal descendants of Abraham—and their faith in the One True God. They had never been fully enslaved, because they had never given up their identity or their faith.
Levite Hebrew Priest and Altar
So they are puzzled—and perhaps take umbrage—when Christ tells them the truth will set them free. They think they know the truth, and they think the truth they know has already set them free. In effect, they believe that the sins they have not committed elevate them above the Gentiles and that they stand in special status before God. This is the second way in which they justify themselves: They have not been born of sexual immorality.
With all the talk about homosexuality, fornication, etc., in the media today, and the branding of Christians as intolerant, we should reflect for a moment on the source of Christian morality. It is not “Christian” in origin, but Jewish. The Jews of Jesus’ time lived in a Greco-Roman society—to which we seem to be returning—in which all forms of sexual expression were celebrated. We see shock in the New Testament over incest and homosexuality in churches, but the Greeks went even further. Plato’s Symposium sought to prove, by logic, that sexual relations with little boys was superior to sexual relations with women.
Here, the Jewish listeners cite their sexual morals as proof of their righteousness. But being more righteous than their neighbors does not mean that the Jews are righteous before God. God’s standard is not relative, but absolute. He requires perfection. One need only read the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7, to understand how thoroughly we (and the Jews of the day) fall short. Judaism was rife with sinfulness.
There follows a discussion in which the term “father” is used to refer to three different persons: Abraham, God, and the worldly fathers of the listeners. In a nutshell, Christ says that the listeners are following their worldly fathers, who are hypocrites, for if they were truly children of Abraham, they would follow their Father in heaven. (Paul fleshes out this concept thoroughly in Galatians.)
Christ is giving His message in steps; He does not fully reveal His message immediately. But it is safe to say that he left his audience hungry to know more about God. For many of his followers, this would have been the first time in their lives that they had been deeply disturbed about their faith. Christ is preparing them for what is to follow, because it will be so miraculous that it will be difficult to believe.
Meditation : Prayer : Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip us with every good thing that we may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight; through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.,..Amen |
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