Author: emmanuelpcgateshead

FRIDAY November 22^nd

 

John 10:7 ‘So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.”’

 

John 10:11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”’

 

I have come to two  ‘I am’ statements today as they are in the same chapter and obviously linked together and they give us a bit of agricultural language and how beautifully Jesus draws from the world of agriculture to help us understand something of the reason why he came, to lay down his life for the sheep, and of how we come to know him as our shepherd.

 

Here in these two ‘I am’ statements he is both the door, gate or entrance into the place where we will also find him as our good shepherd! But as the door he first needed to lay down his life so that the entrance into heaven could be opened to welcome all who would come to believe on him.

 

‘I am the door of the sheep’, I am the good shepherd’, Jesus makes it very clear in what is recorded for us in John 10, that there are many others who would present themselves as a shepherd, or would present alternative ways into heaven, but all who promote themselves and other alternatives are but thieves and robbers, and there intention is exactly the same as the biggest thief and robber, the devil, which is to kill and destroy.

 

But Jesus has come for a number of reasons, and in this chapter, they are illustrated this way:

 

Of first importance is that we may have life, and this is called here abundant life. Life in all its fulness, life exactly as it should be, for the life itself comes from the one who is himself both light and life.

 

Secondly, that we may go in and out and find pasture. Now, this means that as our good shepherd he is going to care for us as his sheep, provide for us as his sheep, and as the door he is also the door keeper who is going to watch out for us as the sheep.

 

Thirdly, as our good shepherd, he calls us by name, this to me speaks of the intimacy of the relationship we now enjoy with the Lord Jesus Christ as our good shepherd.

 

I am the good shepherd. David the psalmist knew something of this relationship with God way before Jesus came into this world and we know the famous and favourite psalm, Psalm 23 where he commences with these words ‘The LORD is my shepherd’.

 

Can you say the same today? We can only know Jesus as our shepherd as we come to him as the door and respond by faith to all that he has done for us as he laid down his life for the sheep at Calvary.

THURSDAY November 21^st

 

John 8:12 ‘Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”’

 

In yesterday’s devotion I quoted from John 1:1, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’  A reminder today that this is so important that we need to keep this at the forefront of our minds that Jesus when making the ‘I am’ statements is both fully God and fully man.

 

John in his introduction of Jesus as the Word of God continues to say ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ (vv4-5)

 

The two standout words in both John 1:4-5 and from John 8:12 are light and life.

 

1. We live in a dark world.

 

• We are living as those who are dead in this world. Yes, we may be physically alive but outside of Christ we are as Paul says In Ephesians 2:1, dead in our trespasses and sins.

 

Therefore, we need light, and we need life and where would and where could it come from, where can it be found? There is only one answer, it came from and is only to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ

 

In John 12:46 Jesus has said ‘I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.’ He is the source of the light.

 

In John 10:10 Jesus says, ‘I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.’ He is the source of life, which is eternal.

 

Now, we needed the initial light, which we received when we came to trust in Jesus, but we also need the daily light to help us to navigate through this dark and sinful world, so we need to walk daily with Jesus.

 

We have so many options for light when the nights get dark, candle, lamp, torch etc. but there is only one option when it comes to spiritual light and it is the One sent from God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

WEDNESDAY November 20^th

 

John 8:12 ‘Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”’

 

We have come to the second of the ‘I am’ statements that Jesus made, and the context of this one falls immediately after the account which has been recorded of the woman who had been caught in adultery, but, as I commented recently while speaking on a Friday evening, most newer translations have this to say about John 8:1-11 that some manuscripts do not include these verses, and when they do, they have footnotes that say that some manuscripts place them after John 7:36 or after John 21:25. This would mean that the I am statement either follows on from John 7:32-36 which is the short account where the Pharisees sent officers to arrest Jesus and he makes this statement ‘Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me.  You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.”’ (v33)

 

Or it follows on from verses 37-39 where Jesus has made this statement ‘On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.’

 

What we see is that Jesus has made claims which the people are finding difficult to understand, in verse 36 it says that they said, ‘What does he mean by saying. . .?’

 

Remember in the first ‘I am’ statement Jesus had said that if anyone came to him they would not hunger and that they would not thirst, in 7:37 he says that ‘If anyone thirst let him come to me and drink’, he then follows this with the promise of the Holy Spirit, and it is from here we jump to our verse for today where Jesus now makes another claim. ‘I am the light of the world’ he then continues with this ‘whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’.

 

You can imagine those who were listening thinking to themselves, ‘Well last week, he said he was the bread of life, now he is claiming to be the light of the world, and what is more he reckons that whoever believes in him or whoever accepts him will never hunger, never thirst and will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. Who on earth is he to make such incredible claims?’

 

Well, the answer is found in the conversations that are built around the statements, and in the very claim that Jesus is making when he uses those two important words ‘I am’.

 

When it was all about the bread, Jesus made the claim that the bread of God is he who comes DOWN from heaven and gives life to the world, and prior to revealing himself as the light of the world, he has said ‘I will be with you a little longer and then I am GOING TO HIM who sent me’.

 

The answer to the claims are first that He, that is Jesus had come down from heaven, and he would return to heaven, yes he came and he will return as the eternal Son of God, but secondly and of equal importance he came and he will return as God, seen in the words ‘I am’. We remind ourselves at this point of the words in John 1:1 ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’

 

From God, Jesus the Son came into this world as the bread and as the light, but we also say that as God, as the I am, Jesus came into this world as the bread and as the light.

 

Those wonderful words we will hear repeated many times during the run up to Christmas ‘Emmanuel’ God with us, the one who is both the bread of life and the light of the world. We will continue this theme in the next devotion.

TUESDAY November 19^th

 

John 6:35 ‘Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”’

 

I have stayed with the same ‘I am’ statement for today, for Jesus in his statement continues to say that not only will those who come to him not hunger, but also that they will never thirst.

 

Naturally speaking these are the two things that we need to satisfy continually, our hunger and our thirst. I have never tried to see how long I could go without eating or drinking, but if I did try, I think it is the thirst that would break me first. I love my tea and coffee, perhaps too much and will probably drink up to 8 if not more sometimes, mugs of tea or coffee every day. I could manage a lot longer without eating.

 

But I wonder how often we starve ourselves spiritually! We ensure we have our meals, maybe up to 3 or 4 times a day, plus a snack in between and like me ensure that there is a ready supply of tea, coffee or whatever else. We make every effort to make sure that we are provided for in the natural. Now, that is of course proper and right, but do we give the same attention to our spiritual well-being, perhaps too often we are more willing to skip spiritual food than we are to skip the natural!

 

 In Matthew during what we call the temptation of Jesus, when tempted by the devil, Jesus replied to him these words ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’, in other words, yes we need the natural bread, but we also need the spiritual bread, that is we partake of Jesus who is the bread of Life and we partake daily of the written word of God which is what we may call our daily bread.

 

In the sermon that Jesus gave on the mount he said ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied’, now, righteousness means right living, but in 1 Corinthians 1:30 we read that Jesus has become to us from God, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, therefore to hunger and thirst after righteousness means to hunger and thirst after Jesus and in his I am statement, Jesus is telling us that as we hunger after him as the bread of life, we will never hunger and we will never thirst.

 

I have a stomach that rumbles a lot, sometimes rather loudly! But it is a sign to me that I am getting hungry, and I need to eat.

 

Can I ask, how often do you get some spiritual rumbles because you are not being filled daily with all that Jesus the living bread is willing to give you. Make sure that you give the same attention to being satisfied spiritually as you would to being satisfied physically.

MONDAY November 18^th

 

As we return with the devotions today, we come to the first of the ‘I am’ statements that Jesus made in the gospel of John. It just happens to be that this one statement falls the day after I had prepared to speak from John 6 at Emmanuel Pentecostal Church, ministry I had prepared well before I wrote this devotion.

 

John 6:35 ‘Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”’

 

This statement appears in a conversation that Jesus had with those who had looked for him the day after he had performed what we call the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand.

 

The folk had enjoyed the bread and fish so much so that they came looking for Jesus, but he saw through them, saying to them, ‘you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves’ (v26) In other words, you are hungry again and you are hoping I’ll get you some breakfast sorted!

 

But Jesus in seeing through them takes it as an opportunity to turn the natural into the spiritual and he eventually makes to them the statement ‘I am the bread of life. . .’  

 

The whole account is too much to fit into a devotion, but what Jesus was saying to them was this: You have come back again this morning because the food you ate yesterday was only sufficient to satisfy your hunger for a while, therefore you need replenishing. But I tell you that ‘I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger’. And what is more he takes up the memory of their fathers eating manna in the wilderness and says to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. As the bread of life, I have come down from heaven, and whoever eats of this bread (eats of me) will live forever!’

 

Well, they were happy to recall their history, but they were not happy to hear and to accept what Jesus was declaring and claiming. They even argued among themselves (v52), and it continues to say that many walked away.

 

But praise God that we have come and have partaken of Jesus who is the bread of life. I have mentioned before in the devotions that the best bread I have ever tasted was a few years back while I was vising Kolding in Denmark, it was amazing, I couldn’t eat enough of it, and I wanted a fresh batch each morning. But as good as it was, I was soon hungry again later in the day!

 

But as we have tasted of the bread of life, we have truly found that as far as spiritual hunger is concerned, we are satisfied. And the good news is that once we have partaken of this heavenly bread we will live forever.

 

‘I am the bread of life’ and only Jesus as the ‘I am’, as God, can make this statement for he is life itself, if you have never come to accept Jesus as your Saviour, then I recommend you come to him as the bread of life and know what it is to be spiritually fed, spiritually filled and spiritually satisfied, and not for a few hours, or a day or two, but for eternity.

FRIDAY November 8^th

 

For today, we will turn to the seven ‘I am’ statements that Jesus made and read each of them. I am going to be travelling to Hungary later today and will return on Wednesday next week, therefore will have a break from sending the devotions till Monday November 18^th when we will go through each of these statements and see what they tell us about Jesus, and the implication of what he has said for you and I and some of them may lead us into other nuggets of truths about Jesus as well! Remember the theme, ‘Jesus the very thought of thee with sweetness fills my breast’ and at the start I said I won’t follow a set pattern!

 

John 6:35 ‘Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”’

 

John 8:12 ‘Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”’

 

John 10:7 ‘So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.”’

 

John 10:11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”’

 

John 11:25-26 ‘Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”’

 

John 14:6 ‘Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”’

 

John 15:1 ‘“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.”’

 

Well, thank you again to all who continue to read or listen to the devotions.

THURSDAY November 7^th

 

As I continue to take us through some of the names and tiles that are given to Jesus, today I will look at the title which in the Old Testament God used to identify himself to Moses, but which also Jesus used of himself when explaining to people around him as to who he really was. It is the well-known title or very important name the ‘I am’.

 

Let’s today consider it in the context in which it was used as God revealed himself to Moses. Found in Exodus 3. First in verse 6

 

‘And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.’

 

Then in verses 13-15

 

‘Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.’

 

An encounter with God and he tells Moses that he is the ‘I AM WHO I AM’, and then says to him when you go say that the ‘I AM has sent me to you, then he clarifies it further by saying that as the ‘I AM’ he is the LORD, the God of your fathers.

 

What we learn is that the two words ‘I AM’ is a title that God used concerning himself as the true and living God, who always has been and always will be. He is the eternal God; he has never known a beginning and he will know no end.  The word LORD in the Old Testament (notice it is all in capital letters) is the divine name YHWH.

 

Now, when it comes to Jesus, it had already been declared by Isaiah that one of the names he was to be given was to be Immanuel, which means God with us. In John 1, we have already seen that John has declared Jesus to be the Word (logos) who was there in the beginning, who was with God, and who was God. But should there still be any doubt concerning Jesus and his deity, and who he really was (and is) we are about to see that in conversation with those around him, he would make several statements that should have finally silenced the doubters, by his declaring to them that he was the ‘I am’! Declaring himself to be God. And it is to those statements, seven in all we will turn to.

WEDNESDAY November 6^th

 

We look today at another of the titles we give to our wonderful Jesus, and it is a title that he alone has the right to own, and it is ‘Saviour’ for there is absolutely nobody else who can be or ever will be a saviour for this world or the Saviour of this world, it is Jesus only! This was the reason why he came into this world; this was the reason why he willingly went to and died at Calvary. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

 

Other religions and faiths will point to what they consider to be the means of entry into heaven, or the basis for receiving eternal life, the way to gain access into the presence of God, but by the very fact that each of them would present an option that by passes Jesus and all that he has done through his atoning death and resurrection is sufficient for us to write them off as false religions, non-starters and therefore to be avoided at all cost.

 

In Acts 4:12, Peter makes this statement ‘And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’ This is an affirmation of the very words of Jesus himself when he made this very telling ‘I am’ statement in John 14:6 ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’

 

When he was writing to the church at Ephesus, Paul reminded them and of course us today as well that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, then continues to say that we have been made alive again, and in verses 12-18 he says this ‘And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father’. This again confirms what Jesus declared that our access, anyone’s access to the Father is only through the one who came and preached peace, the Lord Jesus Christ who is still the only way.

 

As our Saviour he has saved us, he has redeemed us, he has provided the means by which we have been cleansed and forgiven, his shed blood, and in saving us he has delivered us from the punishment we all deserved for our sin, he has removed from upon us the wrath of God which we all deserved and he has brought us into a dynamic and powerful relationship with the one whom we had offended—almighty God and in such an incredible way that we can now know him and call him our heavenly Father. What a wonderful Saviour is Jesus my Jesus, what a wonderful Saviour is Jesus my Lord.

Perhaps someone may read this today and you are relying on some other means to get you into heaven, well if it doesn’t involve Jesus and what he has done for you at Calvary then you are heading down a road that will lead to destruction, it most definitely will not lead you to eternal redemption. Another important statement that Jesus made about himself is this ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’

 

No one else can make these claims, no other prophet, no other god, ONLY JESUS, anyone else you may be trusting in is a thief and a robber. Come to Jesus today and accept him as Saviour, this is the only way.

TUESDAY November 5^th

 

Philippians 2:9-11

‘Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’

 

When it comes to the purpose for which Jesus came into this world, we know from the name Jesus it was to be the one who would save his people from their sins. So, in the next devotion we will see him as Saviour. With the titles ‘Christ and  Messiah’ we see Jesus as being the ONLY one who had been sent from God as the anointed one to be the Saviour, but with the title which we have today from Philippians 2, we see that as a result of his obedience in coming into this world and humbling himself to death on the cross that he was not only raised from the dead, but also ascended back to the Father and given the name which is above every other name, the name to which EVERY knee will bow and which EVERY tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 

Jesus is Lord, Jesus Christ is Lord, HE IS LORD! So, our title today is Lord. There are many other scriptures that affirm this, for example on the road to Damascus when Saul encountered Jesus he says, ‘Who are you Lord’, we see the title used in a number of ways, for example on its own in Acts 2:21, ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved’. Or linked to the name Jesus Acts 8:16 ‘they had only been baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus’, and also linked with both the name Jesus and Christ, 1 Corinthians 15:57 ‘But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ and then as another example, we have in Acts 10:36 ‘preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all).’

 

Initially it is a title that refers to Jesus as being God, for it is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew YHWH, God, so Jesus was already Lord before our text, but here in our text, it refers to Jesus as having power and authority, he is Lord over everything.

 

 In Matthew 28 just as Jesus is about to return to heaven, he made this statement ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’, (28:18).

 

But for us today we need to come to the place of allowing Jesus to be Lord in our lives. Nothing can take away from the fact that he is Lord. This can never and will never be changed, it is eternally set, and one day every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, but as we have come to know him as Saviour (the title we will turn to in our next devotion) we need also to surrender to his Lordship in our lives.

 

MONDAY November 4^th

 

Acts 3:6

‘I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.’

 

As I continue in the devotions and return to Acts 3:6, we see that linked to the name Jesus, Peter used another name or title, ‘Christ’. In Matthew 16, Jesus asked the disciples a question, ‘Who do men say that the Son of Man is?’ and they begin to give some answers: ‘“Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”’ But then came the big test, ‘“But who do you say that I am?”’ and in verse 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

 

He makes two statements concerning Jesus. You are 1) The Christ, 2) The Son of the living God, and our devotion today is based around the first statement ‘You are the Christ’.

 

The name Christ identifies Jesus as being the One who had been sent from God, it is linked to the name ‘Messiah’, together these titles or names identify Jesus as actually being the one that the Jews were waiting and longing for. The one who had been promised through the psalms and the prophets who would be as we saw when Simeon saw him in the temple ‘the consolation of Israel’ and Simeon on seeing the baby Jesus recognised him as the ‘Lord’s Christ’. (Luke 2:25-26)

 

The sad reality is that when it eventually came time to not only recognise and accept Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the people instead chose to reject him, which led of course to Jesus being taken and crucified. But thank God that what seemed to be a negative was all a part of God’s eternal plan for salvation, and we read in Acts 2 the following ‘this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men’, and in those awful moments of crucifixion the most amazing transaction took place, for the One who was named Jesus became the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, and the account in Acts continues ‘God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it’ (v24) and then ‘Being therefore a prophet, (that is David) and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.’

What we see is that Jesus was the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy in so many ways, but here fulfilling the prophetic statements of the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ, the sent One, the promised One, the Messiah (Psalm 16:10).

 

It is a mystery in so many ways, the very fact that those whom he came for so openly rejected him, yet as a result we who are Gentiles by birth can come not only to accept him as Saviour but also as the Lord Jesus Christ.  

 

Now the verses from Acts 2 continue with the following, ‘Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.’ This takes us to the next title for which we will turn to Philippians 2, the title of ‘Lord’.