Today's Reading: Mark 12: 18-27
**For a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link: Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf.
Please click this link to read Mark 12: 18-27
Bible Study
After Jesus' answered those Pharisees and Herodians difficult question about tax, some Sadducess gave Jesus the second flow of challenge.
N.T. Wright gives us a good understanding to this passage:
The Sadducees, the Jewish priestly aristocracy, didn't believe in the resurrection. They challenged Jesus using a story which depends on an ancient Jewish law(Deuteronomy 25: 5-10, Genesis 38:8). If a man dies married but childless, his younger brother is commanded to marry his widow, and count the children as his brother's, thus keeping up the family line and inheritance. But, this happens seven times to one woman. So, the Sadducees took this as evidence that resurrection is ridiculous because if all come back to life, whose wife will the woman be?
Jesus rebukes them by saying that they don't now their Bibles, nor how powerful God is. He gave them a double argument against their objection.
1. Resurrection does not mean mere resuscitation, coming back into exactly the same sort of physical life as before, but transformation, with a different sort of bodily life that we do not understand now.
2. Jesus finds a passage at the heart of the Pentateuch demonstrates that the dead will be raised. It's about when God meets Moses at the burning bush, he introduces himself as Abraham's God, Isaac's God and Jacob's God. They are dead at present, but that since god desires to be known as their God he must be intending to raise them from death in the future.
Jesus had a total victory on this second flow of challenge by proving there is resurrection and that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Do you know that our God is the God of the living? Do you know that Jesus can meet with any kind of challenge and He can help you to meet with any kind of challenge?
Have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to God as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"
Spiritual Journal
What I heard from Jesus today is: You Can Do It!
What I got from Jesus is a wonderful confirmation to take away all our insecurities. We have all kind of insecure past experiences that keep giving us wrong signals that we are helpless, hopeless and no way out!
See how Jesus met all those challenges and Jesus is telling you today if you are willing to follow Him then He can help you to meet with all your challenges and that you can prevail, prevail in Him only!
You can do it! Have you got that?
Dear Lord Jesus,
Thank you for giving us an encouragement that we can do it. Help us to remove all our insecurities that we can trust you totally to lead a joyful and victorious life. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Chinese praise song - 你是我的一切 You Are My All In All
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