Sunday Reading: John 8:21-24
Key Verse: John 8:24
24 Therefore I said to you that you shall die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I AM, you shall die in your sins.
Devotion:
It is strange how you can tell some people that Christ is God until you are blue in the face and they will still not want to believe you. But it does not seem strange that we are taught about things in school that man has concluded are true even though they cannot prove it to be so. Why then does man try to exclude God from school when he is teaching even more that cannot be proven? The more that you quiz someone about theories such as evolution the more they have to talk about other theories and about what if scenarios to try and prove their own scenario. The more we get asked about God the more we can show people from words written down thousands of years ago.
The Jews that were gathering around Jesus were intent on believing what their peers were telling them rather than what Christ was telling them. Their peers did not have God’s Word to back them up because they were changing God’s Word in order to maintain their own self imposed positions of authority. When they faced the true authority they did what they could to use their own laws to prove themselves right. Jesus was trying to allow them to see their own faults without blaming them outright; what better way to make an enemy than to tell someone they are totally wrong with what they are doing!
Christ chose His words carefully so that the men could understand that He has always existed. God chose His words carefully with Moses to make sure that men could understand He is God. “I AM”. By those very words man should fall at His feet and worship Him; but they chose not to believe because they probably felt that their positions would be undermined if they acknowledged that He IS! Believing in Christ and God and The Holy Spirit is something we need to do in order to release ourselves from this world and to be in Christ’s hands forever more.
Points to Ponder:
What does it take you to believe something?
Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?
