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Daily Devotion August 18th

TUESDAY 18th

John 14:1-7

NIV (vv2-3) – ‘My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.’

ESV (vv2-3) – ‘In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.’

We remain in the first few verses of this chapter again today, to look again at the wonderful promise that Jesus made in verse 3, ‘I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.’ As I am preparing this it is a wet and miserable looking morning, it is raining, and the mist has come down over the town so that I cannot see very far. This would perhaps be a good way of describing how it felt for the disciples in the upper room with Jesus, not so much wet but a miserable day, the mist of gloom had descended upon them and they couldn’t see much further than beyond the next hour or two. But Jesus detected the gloom in their hearts and not only did he encourage the disciples that as they trusted in God, so they could also trust in him, (as we saw on 16th) but he makes them an incredible promise, ‘Yes, I am going, but I will come again and fetch you so that you can be with me in the place I am going to prepare for you, don’t be troubled, trust me in the same way as you trust God’. (my paraphrase)

We may look around us at this time and feel that the outlook looks gloomy and hopeless, but we as the family of God have this wonderful promise to cling onto, ‘Jesus is coming again’, we realise that what we see all around us is only temporal and will one day pass away, but what we are and who we are ‘in Christ’ is eternal, and we wait with eager anticipation to receive our eternal inheritance. ‘In this world’, Jesus said, ‘you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’ When you see the gloom, remind yourself, there is a place being prepared for you, and one day Jesus is coming to fetch you and he will lift you from out of the gloom and into his glorious presence so that you will forever be with him.

It was January the 3rd when we reserved our house, here in Stanley, and all the delays made it seem like it was never going to happen, but finally we have moved in. Jesus made the promise two thousand years ago about a home he is preparing and it may sometimes seem like it is never going to happen, but it will, one day and it will be suddenly and at an unexpected moment we will move in, and what an incredible moving in experience it will be as the dead in Christ will rise first and we who are alive and remain will be caught up with them to meet the Lord in the air. Therefore, during this gloomy time in the world in which we find ourselves at this moment, be of good cheer, and keep looking up, for your redemption is drawing near.

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Devotions

Daily Devotion August 14th

FRIDAY 14th

John 13:1-20

NIV (15) – ‘I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.’

ESV (v15) – ‘For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.’

This is linked to where we were with our devotion on Wednesday, a command for us to follow the example of the Lord Jesus Christ which was an example of humility.

In Philippians 2:1-11 we read ‘So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 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.’

May we always make every effort to ensure that Jesus is the example that we want to follow. We live in an era where following someone is very popular, for example with social media, your activity is measured by how many people you follow or how many are following you, many follow a particular football team, or other sporting team / individual, etc. some of those we follow are good examples in their particular sphere, we may follow someone socially because of who they are but there may be aspects of their personal life that we would not be willing to endorse, but when it comes to following Jesus, he is perfect in every way, in who he is, in what he has done and in what he continues to do. Pilate when looking at Jesus made this statement, ‘I find no fault in him’ and Pilate would have been strict in his scrutiny of Jesus. How well do we follow him, how closely do we follow him, how determined are we in ensuring that whatever our lot, we will follow Jesus, any day, every day, we will follow on? For those of us who do use social media, let us make sure that following and liking and keeping up with Tom, Dick and Harry doesn’t get in the way of hindering our following, liking and keeping up with Jesus.

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Daily Devotion August 10th

MONDAY 10th

John 11:1-44

NIV (v27) – ‘Yes, Lord, she replied, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.’

ESV (v27) – ‘She said to him, Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.’

We remain in chapter 11 again today and our verse is the answer that Martha gave to Jesus after he had told her that he was the resurrection and the life, he said to her ‘Do you believe this?’ Martha answered in the affirmative with an important statement that summed up her own understanding of who Jesus was, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God . . .’

Do you remember when a similar answer was given when Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was, Peter replied ‘You are the Christ the Son of the living God’ (Matthew 16:16)

There are a lot of questions in the Bible, this one in John 11:26 ‘Do you believe this?’ is an important one, in its context it is regarding our answer to whether we believe or not that Jesus is the resurrection and the life and that by believing we will never die, but will have eternal life, but what he offers is only possible because of who he is, the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Because of the reason for John’s writing of this gospel, ‘ . . . that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, . . .’ (see John 2:30-31) it is plainly obvious that we cannot go through the gospel, and in particular myself preparing these devotions by having to keep repeating the theme of believing who Jesus is and the importance of believing on him! But that is a good thing, that we keep reminding ourselves that in believing in Jesus we have come to know the only one who can give forgiveness of sin and grant eternal life. While going through the gospel, I have not gone too often into the Old Testament, but with today’s devotion we will turn to Psalm 103 to remind ourselves again of what the Cross means to each one of us, the place where the Christ, the Son of the living God paid for our redemption.

Psalm 103:1-5 ‘Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.’ 

‘. . .who forgives all your iniquity.’ Look at what it says in Psalm 32:1-2 ‘Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.’

We are blessed because we have been forgiven, we are blessed because our sin is forgiven, it has been washed by the blood of the Lamb and therefore the Lord will not count that iniquity against us. The lyrics from a well-known song, ‘Only by grace can we enter’ continues with ‘Lord, if you marked our transgressions , who would stand? Thanks to your grace we are cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.’

Believing on Jesus is so important, not only because of who he is, but because of what he has done for us. I repeat the question Jesus gave to Martha, ‘Do you believe this?’ Then end with the words of John, ‘. . . but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that by believing YOU may have life in his name.’

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Daily Devotion August 6th

THURSDAY 6th

John 9

NIV (v25) – John 9:25 ‘He replied, ‘Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!’’

ESV (v25) – John 9:25 ‘He answered, ‘Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’’

At first glance, it seems strange to us who read this story to think of this man saying that he did not know if the man who had given him his sight was a sinner or not. We have hindsight, prior to this the man had no sight! He may have heard Jesus on occasions before this, he may have heard about Jesus, but he had never physically seen him with his own eyes. But this day, something incredible would happen to him, he would not only hear this man, he would see him, believe him and receive him.

It is another of those chapters where an incredible miracle caused the Pharisees and the gainsayers to debate, discuss and dispute over Jesus. They call the healed mans parents in for questioning, then the healed man himself, suggesting that to him that the healing had been done by a sinner, to which the man replies, ‘Whether he is a sinner or not I do not know’ he was uncertain about who Jesus was, but the facts were very clear, ‘One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ It is almost as if the blind man was so overjoyed about receiving his sight, it did not really matter who had done the miracle!

The story continues that because the man had a measure of faith and understanding he comes to the conclusion that the man who had given him his sight must be from heaven, and he was then cast out of the Synagogue, for anyone who agreed that Jesus was the Christ would be thrown out (v22)

It is only after this that he encounters Jesus again, and he comes to believing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (verses 35-38).

We have already considered light versus darkness in previous devotions, this story relates toward spiritual blindness, the testimony of this man has also become our testimony as we have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, as the hymn writer, John Newton also puts it in the song ‘Amazing grace’ I once was lost but now am found, was blind but know I see.’

The people around us are not only walking in darkness, they are also walking as blind men and women, spiritually blind, they may have heard about Jesus, but they have not yet seen him, they have not yet encountered him. There is an old hymn we used to sing, ‘Jesus is passing this way, this way, today, Jesus is passing this way, is passing this way today’. And I am glad of the day when he passed the place where I was sat in my spiritual blindness, and he stopped and opened my eyes to the wonder of who he is and of his amazing grace, and thank God he is still passing this way, by his Spirit he is still at work reaching out to touch spiritually blind eyes to see him for who he really is, and to unblock spiritually deaf ears to hear him calling and to unstop spiritually dumb mouths to sing forth the praises of him who has brought them out of darkness into his light and to bring strength to the spiritually lame to enable them to dance with joy unspeakable and full of glory! He is passing through our communities, he is passing through our towns, Gateshead, Newcastle and the surrounding district, may we rejoice to see and hear of many yet coming to the place of meeting with him, and having their lives transformed by his touch, by his power and with his grace.

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Daily Devotion August 5th

WEDNESDAY 5th

John 8:31-59

NIV (vv31-32) – ‘To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’

ESV (vv31-32) – ‘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.’

We are told that we are living in a free world, and yet for the believer the freedoms that we have so long enjoyed are slowly being curtailed by those who are in civic and political authority and it isn’t always plainly obvious, but it is introduced through various means such as political correctness, where the rights of every individual are claimed to be upheld . . . unless you abide by the truth which is not only Jesus himself but also his words, including the Word of God, allowing it to governing your life with godly principles, upright morality and righteousness, then those who promote tolerance are reluctant to show tolerance toward you.

But the reality is that even when the world seeks to bind or gag the believer, and despise righteousness, we are the ones who are truly living in real freedom, for we have been set free from the snare of sin and the control of Satan and as we discovered yesterday we have been brought out of the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light, a kingdom where we come under the authority of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and his name is Jesus, and there is no greater authority and rule than his, true freedom comes through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and his Lordship, his rule in our lives and linked to this is our continuing to know or to live in freedom by living according to his word or his teaching.

There are many around the world today who are imprisoned because of their faith, or restricted in their celebration of and living out their faith because of the hostility toward Christianity in a Communist regime, or nations under the control of Islam etc. and yet in their imprisonment they the persecuted believers are living in true freedom because of the eternal hope that has been set within them. We in the western world need to be earnestly praying for our brothers and sisters who are found in such hostile environments and at the same time pray that the erosion of our freedom to celebrate our faith will not continue, but rather be turned around for the glory of God.

Linked in with this, over the last few days there has been much debate over the restrictions that have been put in place, forbidding gatherings which has and still affects the gathering of Churches. There are those who are to the one side seeing it as a political attempt to gag the Church and yet fail to realise or want to overlook that at the same time other forms of mass gatherings are forbidden, and to the other side those who see it has a necessary means for the Church to play its part in the efforts to minimise the spread of the virus. We need to be careful how we react and allow the virus pandemic to eventually reach a level where we can safely open and then ensure that any other means of Government interference or enforcement is not that which would be seen as a definite effort to silence the Christian witness. We are living in unprecedented times, but we can rest knowing who we are in Christ, living in his freedom and abiding by his Word, which is truth.

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Daily Devotion August 4th

TUESDAY 4th

John 8:12-30

NIV (v12) – ‘When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’

ESV (v12) – ‘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 come today to the second ‘I am’ statement of Jesus. (see devotion July 31st) where Jesus says that ‘I am the light of the world.’

Back at the beginning of the gospel, as we are introduced to Jesus as the Word, we are told ‘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.’(1:4-5) It continues in verse 9 to say ‘The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world . . .’ In our text today, Jesus identifies himself as being the light that was coming, now, it had come and he as that light was declaring ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’

This is an astounding declaration to make, for in making it, Jesus was stating that he was the ‘light of the world’, he was born in Bethlehem, born as a Jew, lived his entire life in Israel, less the period of time as a refugee in Egypt after his birth, and yet he was declaring himself as the ‘light of the world’, and as the light if we follow him, we will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. This corresponds with John’s statement in 1:4, ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men.’ This means that Jesus is life and light and that in our believing him, we are receiving Jesus himself, his life and his light. In John 14 we learn that he is ‘the life’ and thank God he came into this world not just to Israel to impart his life into all who would believe, eternal and abundant life.

Life and light – we know that for anything to grow, to have life, light is essential, we know all about photosynthesis, where the light of the sun brings the process for life to happen, in the same way for us to have life we need the light of the Son, and as his light comes into our lives we have the abundant eternal life he grants.

I think in a general sense today we take light for granted, we live in the era of electricity and we can have all forms of light and we can actually overdo it – I don’t even want to remember how many times with our children growing up we have had to remind them to switch the light off, or comment that the house is  more like Blackpool illuminations with all the lights left on (my parents had the same problem too) but when it comes to the one who himself is the light, we can never over do it, we need him to shine in and though our lives, we need him to come and to dispel the darkness which is so widespread in our generation, we need him as the light to lead us and to guide us as we navigate through this world, as strangers and pilgrims bound for an heavenly kingdom.

Over the last month or so, there has been a comet called Neowise visible in the Northern Hemisphere, one of the complaints that has been sounded is that owing to the light pollution, it has been difficult to see the comet, and the best opportunity is to go out into the countryside away from the light pollution to get a better view. The reverse is the state of the world today, too much dark pollution and we as believers and collectively as the Church need to shine in the  midst of this darkness as representatives of the one who is the true light.

Back in the 1980’s Elaine and I were staying with one of her cousins in Mansfield, he was a pit manager and it was during the time of the long strikes. As a manager he had to go down into the pit and through the coal face every day to inspect it, to ensure its safety for when the miners returned to work. He invited me to go with him, this of course was a new experience for a farmer’s son, and I have to be honest I really didn’t know what to expect, but the deeper we went and then the further we crawled through the cutting face I began to understand what true darkness was really like and  how important the little light we had was. Christian friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, Church, those of us who have come out of the darkness and into the light, let us never forget how truly dark the kingdom of darkness really is, it is under the control of the prince of darkness, and my how this world needs the light. We really are living in dark days where the principalities and powers would love to snuff out the light of the Christian gospel, we need to be courageous and willing to let our light, as Christ who is the light shines through us, shine before men so that they will glorify God. (Matthew 5:14-16)

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Daily Devotion August 3rd

MONDAY 3rd

John 7

NIV (vv37-38) – ‘On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’

ESV (vv37-38) – ‘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.’

One of the features of the British summer is the plethora of music festivals that take place around the country, venues which become mass gatherings for music lovers, obviously Covid-19 has prevented them from taking place this year, and for the record, no, I have no personal interest in ever attending one! But, can you imagine one of these festivals taking place, and toward the end, someone stands up and cries out with a loud voice ‘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.’ I am sure there would be a fair few open-mouthed folk gawping and thinking ‘what on earth is he on about’, there would be those who would perhaps mock or laugh. Now I know that the situation in John’s gospel, was different, it was a religious festival, not a music festival, but the crowd in that time had the same need as the crowds who fill the festivals in the UK, many of them would have gawped open-mouthed, some would have mocked and laughed, but the festival goers then and also today, like us have the same need of the Lord Jesus Christ, they like us need to know what it is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ so that from out of our inner most being, rivers of living water will flow.

After Jesus had stood up and cried out, it caused division, see this in verses 40-52 and the same response happens today as we declare Jesus, who he is and what he has said about himself and all that he offers to those who believe, but we must never allow the risk of opposition to shut us up and prevent us from declaring the good news concerning Jesus. Just as Jesus stood up in the festival, we need man and women who are willing to stand up in this crowded world, a world crowded with opinion, crowded with prejudice, crowded with useless gods, crowded with secularism and plurality to declare the good news of the message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The fact that (Covid-19 aside) the festivals are crowded, that the shopping malls are crowded, that the pleasure and sporting facilities of this world are crowded (more often on a Sunday, when Churches are struggling to be filled) etc. indicates that people are hungering and thirsting, they are seeking ways and means of getting satisfaction, but looking in the wrong place. There is nothing wrong with a (decent) festival, shopping mall, pleasure, or sporting facility, but when they become the means through which people try to get lasting satisfaction and to meet the inner longings of the heart then they become a problem, for they will keep men and women from coming to the only one who can satisfy the inner eternal longing of the heart.

May God help us who know Jesus and who are the representatives for Jesus today to become bold and courageous to stand up in the crowd and to declare the good news of the gospel.

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Daily Devotion August 2nd

SUNDAY 2nd

John 6:22-35

NIV (v35) – ‘Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’

ESV (v35) – ‘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 7:37-39

We continue again today with the subject of bread and take todays thought from the prayer our Lord taught his disciples to pray. Todays devotion is a deviation away from John’s gospel and the purpose for it will be at the end.

Luke 11:1-4 ‘Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread,  and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.’

‘Give us each day our daily bread.’

Last Friday in our devotion we saw that Jesus described himself as ‘the bread of life’, here in this prayer which he taught his disciples to pray, he encourages them to ask the heavenly Father for daily bread. As the bread of life, Jesus satisfies our spiritual need, but our heavenly Father is also the one who satisfies our physical need or our daily requirement for nourishment for the physical.

In what we call his ‘sermon on the mount’ in Matthews gospel, Jesus made it very clear that not only are our spiritual need met through the good news of the gospel, but our God also provides for us in the natural. He has placed the seasons into place, springtime and harvest, the rains that soak into the ground and the sunshine to enable the planted seed to grow, for the earth to produce our daily bread. In the sermon, Jesus tell the listeners and it applies to us as well today ‘Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?’ (Matthew 6:25-26)

There is so such going on in the world today that could cause us to be anxious, as we see the ongoing threat of the Covid-19 virus and the complication arising from it in regard to the worlds economy affecting jobs and in turn peoples financial security. We need to remind ourselves that our security is found in the Lord Jesus Christ and he knows what we need, and as we remain constant in our walk with him, he will provide our daily bread. (As I am typing this devotion I am listening to a pre-recorded service and the song being played is ‘You’re a good, good Father’) and he is our Father, ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread . . .’ He is faithful. Faithful forever you will be, all your promises are yes and amen.

The purpose of this devotion is twofold, to firstly remind us of the faithfulness of our heavenly father in his provision toward us the children of men and secondly, as we see the combine harvesters beginning to roll out into the fields to harvest the grain, let us give thanks from grateful hearts for the daily provision we have.

Perhaps in the western world we too often take so much for granted, we need to continually come back to the Creator and the Sustainer with thankful hearts. Remember the story in Luke 17:11-19 where Jesus healed ten lepers, yet only one returned to give thanks. As we continually give thanks for our great salvation, so we also need to continually give thanks for his daily provision, give thanks for the ‘bread of life’ and for the ‘daily bread’.

‘Great is thy faithfulness,

great is thy faithfulness;

morning by morning new mercies I see;

all I have needed thy hand hath provided –

great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!

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Daily Devotion August 1st

SATURDAY 1st

John 6:22-35

NIV (v35) – ‘Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’

ESV (v35) – ‘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.’

As we continue from yesterday’s devotion, where Jesus had said that he was the bread of life, I will continue today and tomorrow with the subject of bread as seen in the Scripture, looking at two separate verses, for today:

Luke 4:1-1-4 ‘And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry.  The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.’

In the first Scripture we are taken to the account where Jesus is in the wilderness and being tempted by the devil. There are three temptations,

  1. To turn a stone to bread
  2. To worship the devil
  3. To throw himself down from the pinnacle of the temple

The first was to do with hunger as we are told that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, and during that time he had ate nothing. Understandably, he was hungry, and the devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’  This was a quote from the OT in Deuteronomy 8:3 ‘And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.’

A couple of thoughts here, the devil says ‘If you are . . .’ it always makes me smile, for the devil knew without any shadow of doubt who Jesus was and that he really was the Son of God, what he was trying to do was to weasel into what he thought would be a weak point on Jesus behalf (his hunger) and as a result get Jesus to take the devils advice and put it into action, making the stone into bread. If Jesus had done this, it would have been a landmark victory for the devil and would have led to the failure of the plan of salvation. (As would have been the yielding to the other two temptations)

The devil is as we are reminded in Scripture going about like a roaring lion, seeking who he can devour. (1Peter 5:8 ‘Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.’) We could put it this way, he is prowling around or sniffing around to see if he can find our weak points, our vulnerabilities and he would love to try to trick us into conceding to any temptation he would bring our way to try to snare us, trap us and to trip us up.

Jesus responded to the devil with a Scripture, and for us as well, we need to realise that among many other things Scripture is a tool or a weapon we need to take up and use as a defence and protection against the wiles of the devil. In Ephesians 6, the Word of God is pictured as the sword, ‘. . . and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.’ I do not know about you, but I think the devil could do with a few plunges of this amazing sword! May God help each of us, however long we may have been a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, to never give into the wiles of the devil, but to be determined in our hearts to wholeheartedly devote ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Daily Devotion July 31st

FRIDAY 31st

John 6:22-35

NIV (v35) – ‘Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’

ESV (v35) – ‘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.’

We come today to the first narrative in John’s gospel to contain one of what we call the ‘I Am’ statements of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are seven of them altogether:

John 6:35 ‘I am the bread of life.’

John 8:12 ‘ I am the light of the world.’

John 10:7-9  ‘I am the door.’

John 10:10 ‘I am the good Shepherd.’

John 11:25 ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’

John 14:6 ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’

John 15:1 ‘I am the true vine.’

In our Scripture for today, Jesus calls himself or refers to himself as the bread of life or living bread seven times. Verses 32, 33, 35, 41, 48, 51 and 58.

The crowds that had enjoyed the meal of loaves and fishes had decided to look for Jesus again the next day, and who could blame them if there was the possibility of another free meal! I would have been there for sure if it had been something else instead of fish! But Jesus discerned that their motives for coming to him again were not genuine, it was only for the free meal and not because of who he really was. V27 ‘Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves . . .’  

It is out of the continuing dialogue that Jesus had with the crowd that we learn that he is the bread of life. They challenged Jesus about the time when Moses had fed the children of Israel in the wilderness with the manna which they described as bread from heaven, because it appeared on the ground every morning. (Exodus 16) Jesus replies by saying that it wasn’t Moses that had provided the bread, but rather his (that is Jesus’) Father and he then incorporates the statement to take on a present reality for them by saying ‘ . . .my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is HE who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ In the wilderness the bread, manna was a substance they could collect and eat, but here the bread was not a substance that they could collect and eat, but was in fact a person (he), who was the ‘Word who had become flesh’ whom if we believe in will grant eternal life.

The manna or bread in the wilderness only sustained life for a period, they had to collect a fresh supply every day and eat to survive, but the true bread, the living bread gives eternal life! We come by faith and partake of him, and as we eat and drink, we receive the life he offers. It is in the same chapter that Jesus speaks of eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood to have eternal life (John 6:53-58) Jesus isn’t saying that we have to literally eat of his flesh and literally drink of his blood, we know that this is not possible, he is using language that speaks or signifies of us partaking of him by faith, it is our accepting him, or believing that he the bread of life, as being the one who God has sent to grant eternal life, it is a figure of speech to describe that as by faith we believe, we are partaking of the bread of life and are being saved.

I do not eat a lot of bread, I have mentioned in a previous devotion that I like going to ‘Subway’ which uses a bread roll for the sandwich, I could go days without eating bread. I went to Denmark a few years ago for a conference, and in the morning as you woke up there would be this beautiful smell filling the air, and as I made my way the first time for breakfast, the smell was incredible, it was Danish bread and I couldn’t eat enough of it, it is most definitely the best bread I have ever eaten, well, almost! For I am glad that I have come to receive of the ‘bread of life’ he is the best bread ever!