Category: Bible Reading & Meditation

“A body You have prepared for Me.” –Hebrews 10:5 Jesus is the eternal God. Before His Incarnation, He was Spirit (see Jn 4:24) and therefore invisible. To experience through our senses the full glory of the all-holy God would certainly have been more than we could bear (see Ex 33:20). Therefore, we would more likely see only “the vision of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” (Ez 1:28). This caused Ezekiel to fall on his face (Ez 2:1). Such an experience of God’s presence – even several times removed – would probably knock us out or even kill...

“The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant.” –Jeremiah 31:31 God, Who is Love (1 Jn 4:16), wants to love us in a permanent, faithful relationship, which is similar to marriage, only better. As married couples make a covenant with each other by exchanging marriage vows, so the Lord made covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and all His chosen people. The problem with these covenants was that God’s people broke them all (Jer 31:32). Human beings seem incapable of keeping a covenant with God, incapable of loving God faithfully. Therefore, God promised to...

“No man ever spoke like that before.” –John 7:46 “The crowd was sharply divided over Him.” –John 7:43 The temple guards “forgot” to arrest Jesus, so impressed were they by His words. However, the Pharisees were unimpressed; they said the guards and the crowds that listened to Jesus had been taken in (Jn 7:46ff). This was not the first time Jesus received such contradictory reactions to His words. At His hometown of Nazareth, “they marveled at the appealing discourse which came from His lips” (Lk 4:22). Nevertheless, a few minutes later, “the whole audience in the synagogue was filled with...

“At this they tried to seize Him, but no one laid a finger on Him because His hour had not yet come.” –John 7:30 Jesus repeatedly took His place publicly amid ferocious opposition and boldly proclaimed the Word of God. “This led some of the people of Jerusalem to remark: ‘Is this not the One they want to kill? Here He is speaking in public and they don’t say a word to Him!’ ” (Jn 7:25-26) The keys to Jesus’ fearlessness are: His relationship with His Father. Because Jesus knew that the Father loved Him (see Jn 5:20), He had...