Today's Reading: John 1: 29-34
**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 1: 29-34
Bible Study
This is a short passage but a very important and difficult to explain passage.
N.T. Wright gives us a clear picture of what this passage is about. He says,
John the Baptist is famous for many things, but the central and most important role he has in the New Testament is to point away from himself and towards Jesus. In particular, here in John's gospel, he points him out as 'God's lamb'. And with that he indicates, at the very start of the gospel story, how things are going to end, and why. Jesus is to die a sacrificial death for the sins of the world...
John, like many New Testament writers but in his own particular way, wants us to understand the events concerning Jesus as a new, and better, Exodus story. Just as God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, so God was now bringing a new people out of an even older and darker slavery.
But who is this new people? In the original Exodus story Israel is rescued from the dark powers of the world, which in that case meant the Egyptians under Pharaoh. But now, according to John, God's lamb is going to take away the sin of the world itself. This can only mean that God's rescue operation is moving out, wider than just Israel, to embrace the whole of creation.
This has already been hinted in the Prologue (1: 12-13). Everybody who receives the Word, who believes in his name, can become a newborn child of God.
Only when the lamb has been killed for the world's sins can the spirit of the living God be poured out on his people. Only when the Temple has been made clean and ready - the Temple of human hearts, polluted by sin and rebellion - can the presence of God come and live there.
Well said by N.T. Wright! What have you got from his guidance and inspiration now?
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: Willing to let Jesus die for your sins?
You can see above a famous painting, an unusual painting indeed! This can not be a fact of what is in the picture because the one pointing to Jesus is not the apostle John but John the Baptist! And John the Baptist died long time ago before Jesus was crucified!
I had a picture with the Ven. H. Miller (Executive Director and Director of Leadership Development, AMiA)at Regent College last year beside this painting. It is so meaningful for Regent College to get a copy of this painting on their wall to give some inspiration to the seminarians(including our son Ignatius who just completed his second year at Regent).
The message I got from Jesus is that most Christians(including me!) do not let Jesus to die for our sins because we do not want to die on our sins. We do not want to change because to change is painful and sometimes impossible! But without our "dying" daily the Holy Spirit can not be pour down on us!
Today Jesus invites you to let Him die for your sins and be changed and transformed. Can you say YES!
Dear Lord Jesus,
Help us to say YES to you to die for our sins. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Chinese praise song - 祢讓我生命改變 You Transform My Life
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