"If the LORD delights in a person's way, He makes their steps firm; though they stumble, they will not fall, for the LORD upholds them with His hand." (Psalm 37:23,24)

Tuesday, 17 March, 2020: John 1:29-34

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aircraft
 
Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends around the world. Today is Tuesday, March 17.
 
Almost by the minute shocking news continues to break in North America and much of the world, regarding the Coronavirus. We are seeing the evidence of the power of fear, anxiety and even worry, aren’t we? How is your heart today my friends? On the spectrum from panic to peace, where are you…really? What is most contributing to the condition of your heart today? 
 
“Walking with Jesus”, as of this morning, is being received in 47 countries, 636 cities around the world! Think of that my friends!
 
I live in Florida, USA and many things have occurred here in recent days which are unprecedented. The Cruise Lines have anchored their empty ships for 30 days. Disney has closed their huge theme parks for 2 weeks. Thousands of people who had planned to come to Florida for “spring break” have changed their plans. Major sporting events which were scheduled including basketball and baseball, have been cancelled. Concerts and other large gatherings, including some churches, have temporarily suspended. And the news from the rest of America and the world has led many people here to panic shopping so some store shelves are empty! 
 
scared
 
Most of us in North America, and much of the modern world, have never faced a prolonged, global, tsunami of fear and worry like we have right now. Fear can lead to irrational words, illogical choices and dangerous behavior, isn’t that true? 
 
It’s time to be cautious, careful and contemplate, with mature wisdom, what’s happening and what our response should be… today and each day for the foreseeable future.
 
In generations past, great tragedies… plagues, wars, famine, pestilence, contagious and terminal diseases, natural disasters… were met with a unified upward look to God and a cry for God’s help. But much of the world, Europe and North America in particular, have with intention, determination and passion, abandoned Godpushed God out of every segment of society. Is that true where you live?
 
Therefore we now face a ‘pandemic of fear’… WITHOUT God! Now think about that! Look around, chaos and near anarchy is evidence of a society without God. 
 
God didn’t leave us, our societies pushed Him out… out of our healthcare as we permit and even defend vehemently, the right to slaughter babies in the womb, declaring they are not yet alive or are not as important as the freedom of choice! 
 
We pushed God out of our morality as we demand the affirmation and celebration of so many things in our society that Holy God deems wicked and evil. 
 
We pushed God out of our families as we insist on redefining marriage and family in defiance of God’s clear pattern for marriage and family.
 
We’ve pushed God out of our school systems as we reject God’s explanation of His creation of our universe and His design of humanity, and then we demand that prayer, Bibles and even discussion of God take place outside of educational facilities, even off school property! 

We’ve demanded God stay far away from our entertainment as our appetites consume increasing violence, immorality and debase behavior, and enthusiastically mock those few producers of God honoring, character building, entertainment! 
 
My friends, everywhere in the world, I invite you to look closely at your community, your country. What do you see? The cultural implosion taking place around us is self-inflicted! 
 
frustrated man
 
And therefore when something we do not understand and cannot control, creeps in among us, like Coronavirus COVID-19, we ONLY have dysfunctional, God-less, human resources to address the challenge, since we have insisted GOD is not welcome in our societies! 
 
Now think about that friends… the panic you see all around you is self-inflicted. It’s very much like a little child refusing their parents’ help, demanding their independence and suddenly find themselves facing something their infantile immaturity is unable to understand or handle. That’s us… humanity around the world in 2020!!
 
My appeal to all of you, my “Walking with Jesus” friends today is this: YOU may be strategically positioned to be the wisdom, the calm, the hope and the help your friends, family, co-workers, community and even nation desperately needs in these fearful times! 
 
To help us all, for the next several days I’m going to give us a powerful, foundational, time-tested, tried & true, God given truth from the Old Testament and also continue our New Testament journey, following in the footsteps of Jesus to Easter. I urge you to soak in these truths and pass them along to those you know who could use their help! 
 
At times like this here’s a good question: Is God aware of what’s happening and does God care? Here’s another: Where do I anchor my HOPE in these fearful times?
 
 
Here’s the Old Testament, powerful truth I promised for today: Psalm 75:3
“When the earth and all its people quake, it is I (God) who hold its pillars firm.” And what are those ‘pillars’? Many, but I offer TWO today:
 
1. TRUTH. Everything in life depends on reliable, verifiable, unchanging TRUTH. GOD is the definer of TRUTH, because He is Creator of the Universe, and all life, including every human being. The Creator has the inherent right to define the TRUTH by which that which He creates functions. Now think about that. 
 
If you can create something from nothing, then you too have the right to determine the rules by which that thing functions, the truth about that thing. Listen to Isaiah 45:18,19 “This is what the LORD says – He who created the heavens, HE is God; He who fashioned and made the earth, He founded it; He did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited, He says –
   ‘I am the LORD God and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness…I the LORD speak the truth, I declare what is right.
 
   God alone knows the full truth about Coronavirus COVID-19, what it is, how it spreads and how to kill it. Face Fear with TRUTH my friends! Seek God’s truth, never turn away from it, never reject it. 
 
We must confess that our societies have rejected God’s truth in almost every area of life… and we are thus left with the hopeless mess of a God-less, truth-variable society! We must repent, turn from this suicidal path of self-destruction, and turn to God and HIS truth in every and all areas of life! We must reject that which rejects God’s truth!
 
2. GOD... The vast majority of the human race does not acknowledge or trust Almighty God. Humanity has fabricated all types of ‘gods’, ‘god theories’, ‘self-help philosophies’. There is only ONE True, Living, Almighty, Creator, Holy, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent God. Chasing after anything else is wasted time and will end you up in a God-less, desperate, hopeless state of mind and heart here on earth, and a terrifying eternity without God! 
 
Isaiah 45 says “I am the LORD God and there is no other; apart from Me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged Me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting men may know there is none besides Me. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster, I the LORD do all these things…It is I who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their story hosts.” (Is. 45:5-7,12)
 
  This God who created you, me and all of us, sustains our lives with every breath. (Col. 1:16,17) Life begins and ends with HIM, and in times of fear and confusion turning to the God who made you and loves you is the wisest thing anyone can do! Look at the closing verses of this powerful Isaiah chapter 45: “…there is no God apart from Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but ME! Turn to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God and there is no other.” (Is. 45:22)
  
Tomorrow, I’ll give you another, powerful, Old Testament truth for these frightening times.
 
Now let’s re-join our journey following in the footsteps of Jesus from His Baptism to Easter. Why? Because Jesus is GOD among us, who came to make God known to us, proclaim God’s truth among us and be the Savior we just read about in Isaiah 45! Today let’s join the crowd in John 1:29-34 who are simply amazed to learn that God was there, among them, in days not unlike ours, for life in first century Palestine, under Roman rule, was frightening! 
 
Jesus came walking toward John the Baptizer and the crowd, that day, soon after His baptism and desert battle with Satan, which we looked at yesterday, and suddenly John pointed right at Jesus and shouted… “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the One I meant, when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because He was before me…the reason I came baptizing with water was that HE might be revealed to Israel.(John 1:29-31)
 
Wow! Now that’s a mouthful, would you agree? Don’t be confused by the ‘after me’ and ‘before me’. John was calling the people to recognize this person Jesus was not a normal human being who began in the womb of his mother in conception. This Jesus is “Immanuel”, God the Son, who is fully God and therefore eternal, with no beginning.
 
His incarnation was simply a brief 33 years of earthly residence to help us know God and accomplish His mission of redemption which required the full atonement death payment for sin. That’s why John said Jesus ‘surpassed me’, He is much greater than John. 
 
To the Jewish people standing there, who both saw the man John pointed to and heard what John said, this was a shocking moment. They understood that everyday in the Temple court a lamb was killed and offered, both morning and evening, on the great altar, in confession of the sins of Israel as prescribed by God in Exodus 29:38-43. And once a year the High Priest would lead the people through various significant and specific actions, on the Day of Atonement, which asked God to take their sins away from the people! 
 
lamb
 
One of those actions was taking a specially chosen live goat and according to Leviticus 16:21,22 the High Priest was to “…lay both hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites – all their sins – and put them on the goat’s head. He shall then send the goat away, into the desert…the goat will carry on itself all their sins, to a solitary place away in the desert…”  
 
Now, for Jewish people in the crowd that day, can you see how they would immediately conclude that John, pointing at Jesus, was saying HE, a living person, was becoming both the daily sacrificial lamb, in the Temple courts, and the Day of Atonement goat that could take their sin away? It was a staggering statement, which they could not possibly have fully understood, but with this, John’s proclamation, the journey began for people to learn WHO Jesus was and WHY He had come to earth, Immanuel, ‘God with us
 
As you continue reading in verse 32&33, you’ll see John explains how he had come to understand who Jesus really was. John then said “I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:34) My friends, if the people had not nearly had heart attacks with John’s first statements, this statement would have sucked the wind out of their lungs! 
 
No one had ever claimed another man was “the Son of God”! That was blasphemous, it was ridiculous, it was beyond comprehension… but, I imagine John stood there, hip deep in the Jordan river, pointing right at Jesus, with his eyes wide open and a look of strong confidence, and then turning to look at every person in the crowd as if to say… ‘what about you, will you believe it’?? 
 
Time stood still. No one breathed. No one said anything. What would you have done?
 
Do you see the white space in your Bible between John 1 verse 34 & 35? About 24 hours fills that space… it was time for the people to think about what they had just witnessed. And that’s what we are going to do. We’re going to pick up our study tomorrow, in verse 35. But for now… who do YOU say Jesus is, and how important is Jesus in your life in these frightening times?
 
Oh Lord Jesus, I lift up all of my listeners, all around the world, please God, draw us close to You. Open our minds to know Your TRUTH, open our hearts to Trust You as the only true, living God…
 
 
 

Click to read today’s chapters: John 1. (At the top you can choose a different translation.)
 

Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from youcontact me here.


Pastor Doug Anderson    262.441.8785  
Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)

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