Author: emmanuelpcgateshead

FRIDAY November 29^th

 

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.”’

 

‘. . . and the truth’, I am the truth. Have you noticed how difficult it is today to decide what is truth or not. Now you may not appreciate me saying this, but I am going to say it, it is becoming more apparent as each day passes that our present government is only in government today because they seem to have lied or not disclosed the truth about what they were planning to do to get the votes. And let me be clear, the other parties are hardly any different as they seek to hide things or prevent the truth about matters being brought to light.

 

It almost seems that to get on today you need to be good at telling lies, or good at ignoring the truth. So where on earth can we look and find one who is truthful and trustworthy.

 

Well, John’s gospel tells us that we can look to Jesus, in the first chapter and verse 14 he says, ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.’ A few verses earlier John had said that Jesus was the true light, which gives light to everyone (v9), and Jesus says yes, you can look to me, for I am not just the way, I am also the truth!

 

In John 18:37 after Jesus had been brought before Pilate, he said to Pilate, ‘. . . for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth

‘. Pilate replies in verse 38 ‘What is truth?’ Well, we can understand why Pilate said ‘what’, but if only he had really understood he would have said ‘who’ for standing before him was the one who is the truth.

 

Now to answer the question ‘what is truth’ in a general sense, we would answer it is to be true and genuine, some synonyms would be honesty, reality, genuineness, but excuse me for putting it this way concerning Jesus, as the truth he is the real deal!

 

This means that regarding what Jesus says, you can depend on it, you can believe it without doubting, you can build your life on it, it you can fix your eternal destiny on it, for not a single untruth was ever uttered through his lips, and could not, because he is truth.

Now, as we consider Jesus as the truth, we need to remind ourselves that as we have come to know him that we must also be a people who speak the truth, our lives should be lived in such a way that having come to know the One who is the truth that we seek to live with integrity and honesty,

THURSDAY November 28^th

 

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.”’

 

‘I am the way’

 

As we consider this first part of the statement that Jesus has made, ‘I am the way’, I want to consider Jesus not just as ‘the way’, which is to do with how we can get to the Father, but also consider the way in which he would make the access to the Father possible, for this second aspect was essential for him to be the way.

 

In saying ‘I am the way’ Jesus is saying that he is the only One who can make access to the Father possible, clarified by the words ‘except through me’.

 

Now we must never apologise for saying that we believe what Jesus is saying, and we must never shy away from declaring it, for as I mentioned yesterday, we live in a world where men and women are being offered or presented so many various options, other alternatives to enable them to get to heaven. Religions, and there are around 4,000 different religions around the world, (Source the internet) there are those who we would consider as cults, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses etc.

 

But if what they teach does not include Jesus and Jesus only, and what he has done by going to Calvary as the way to the Father, then they are leading men and women up the garden path, to a dead end. It doesn’t matter how well they might package things up, how pleasant they may seem to be in the way they present what they are saying, the end result will be bitter, for those who follow them will never ever have access to the Father.

 

So, Jesus is the way, the only way, but what was the way in which he would demonstrate or prove that he was the way, well in the words of a song we have the answer but remember the words of the song are based upon Scripture.

 

The way of the cross leads home,

The way of the cross leads home,

It is sweet to know, as I onward go,

The way of the cross leads home.

 

The way of the cross, firstly this was the way that Jesus needed to go, to the cross to make the entrance or the way into heaven available to you and me. Then you and I need to come to the cross and believe by faith what Jesus has done for each one of us, and recognise that he made the way because he is the way and in the words of the song say:

 

I must needs go home by the way of the cross,

there’s no other way but this:

 

When we consider Jesus as the way, we cannot and must not separate it from the message of the cross. For this is the only way, the only means of your salvation and mine, and the only way, the only means for us to be able to get to heaven.

 

WEDNESDAY November 27^th

 

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.”’

 

We have arrived to the well-known and important ‘I am’ statement that Jesus made, especially as we consider the multi-faith, and you can believe whatever you like world in which we find ourselves living today.

 

But before I continue I make it very clear that what Jesus states here is as equally true today as it was when he spoke the words to the disciples as he spent the final few days on earth with them before he went to Calvary to do what he had come to do, which was to be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, and within the context of John 14, to make open the way, the access into heaven and to the Father.

 

Here, Jesus declares three things about himself, he is the way, he is the truth, and he is the life.

 

As I was thinking about this verse a little chorus came to mind that is often sung with children in mind:

 

I am the way the truth and the life

That’s what Jesus said

I am the way the truth and the life

That’s what Jesus said

Without the way there is no going

Without the truth there is no knowing

Without the life there is no living

I am the way the truth and the life

That’s what Jesus said

 

And because it is what Jesus said, I and I trust we all emphatically believe it.

 

We will consider each of the three parts individually, but for today remind ourselves that the whole statement is very clear that without Jesus, and without what he has done, there would be no entrance into heaven, and no one would be able to find themselves in the presence of God. ‘No one’, Jesus said, ‘comes to the Father except through me’.

This statement comes as a reply to a question that Thomas asked, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ (v5)

 

Jesus had just told the disciples that he would be leaving them, and that he was returning to his Father, and that he was going to prepare a place for them, but not to worry, for he would come again to take them to himself, so that where he was going to, they also would go.

 

So as heaven is being prepared, whether you want to think of it as having a mansion prepared as the KJV says, or a room in the Father’s house being prepared as the ESV, NIV and other newer versions say, the only available way to be able to be there is through the Lord Jesus Christ.

TUESDAY November 26^th

 

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?”’

 

We have come to the fifth of the ‘I am’ statements, and this is one of my favourites because it ties in with my favourite chapter in the whole of the word of God, the great resurrection chapter, 1 Corinthians 15.

 

1 Corinthians 15 is the chapter that explains to us in more detail than anywhere else as to what the outcome was and of course still is regarding the statement that Jesus made when he said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’.

 

It is one thing to say it, but another for Jesus to prove it—and he did! He obviously gave proof around the grave of Lazarus (which was when he made the statement) that he had power over death. People pronounced dead are dead, how can they come back to life-they cannot, unless the power of God is at work, and Jesus proved that power. But Lazarus would have to die again! But when Jesus died, he proved that he had such power over death, that when he rose he would never die again, and as result that whoever believes in him, though they die yet they will live again! And how? Through the power of the Spirit, for we read in Romans 8:11 ‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.’

 

Jesus who is the life, gives to us new life when we are born again, which is eternal life, our spirit is made alive again, and so we are alive today in Christ Jesus, but the day will come when if we have died in Christ, we will be raised from the dead, we have a hope that is very real in the present and will be fully realised in the future, quoting from the apostle Paul, ‘If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.’ But he continues to say, ‘But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.’ 1 Corinthians 15:19-23.

 

We have a hope that is steadfast and certain, for Christ who died and rose again, has gone through the curtain, he is on the throne and one day he is coming again to call from the graves all who are in Christ, and all who are alive in Christ and as we hear his voice we will rise, or if alive we will be raptured from the sphere of time into eternity. And it is because we have been made alive in Christ Jesus and to those who have believed on him, he has given eternal life.

 

Jesus said to Martha after making his claim, ‘Do you believe this?’ Do you? Let me remind anyone reading this of the alternative ‘ Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.’ John 3:36.

MONDAY November 25^th

 

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 mentioned in the last devotion as to how beautifully Jesus drew from the world of agriculture. I guess being a farmer’s son it brings back the good memories of being a child growing up on the farm. But it brings back to me the greatest of all my childhood memories, for when I was nine years old, another chapter where Jesus talked about sheep was preached from on the Sunday evening in the church I attended when I gave my life to the Lord Jesus Christ and personally came to know him as my Shepherd. From that day onward I could and still say The Lord is MY shepherd.

 

The portion of scripture that was preached from that evening was from Luke 15 and what we call the parable of the lost sheep, verses 3-7 ‘So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbours, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.’

 

I was lost but Jesus found me! I will jog our memories as to what I have called this series of devotions, ‘Jesus the very thought of thee’ and the song continues with ‘with sweetness fills my breast’, and as I am considering these ‘I am’ statements I hope that just as I am thrilled as to who Jesus is, and as to what he has done and who he is and as done for me that each one of us can say that the very thought of it all fills our lives with sweetness and gladness.

 

It is incredible to know that our blind eyes have been opened, our deaf ears have been opened, our hard hearts have been softened and our dead lives have been quickened and made alive again and all because of Jesus, who came as the light to give life, who came as the bread to satisfy, who came as the shepherd to find us and feed us and as the door that gives us access into heaven.

I was lost—that was my past, Jesus found me, Jesus leads me, Jesus watches over me, Jesus cares for me, that is my present, Jesus is coming for me, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, that is my future.

 

Can you say the same? For Jesus came into this world to find, seek, save those who are lost, and he calls out to you today and tells you that he loves you and wants you to come through the door and to be saved.

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.