Today: John 17

Is God just, or is He merciful? Yes. Read / Listen Listen to passage & devotional: Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 11 Q. [God won't permit sin to go unpunished...] But isn’t God also merciful? A. God is certainly merciful, but he is also just. His justice demands that sin, committed against his supreme majesty, be punished with the supreme penalty— eternal punishment of body and soul. Summary We meet Moses in today's passage at a very low point in his life. After descending down from the ultimate mountaintop experience in which he'd been in God's presence for an extended time, he returns to find his fickle people dancing around hand made idols. Moses speaks to God with amazing honesty, reminding God that the Israelites were His people, and almost demanding that God teach him God's ways, so that Moses might know God. Moses even flat out demands that God show Moses His glory! Moses has already seen God unleash the plagues on Israel, open the Red Sea, speak like thunder from a mountain, along with all sorts of other miracles along the way. God would have been just in striking Moses with lightning for making such a demand asking for more glory. But instead God lovingly complies, telling Moses that He will cause His goodness to pass in front of Moses. What Moses learns is that God's goodness has two poles: grace, mercy and peace for those He's chosen, but justice & punishment for those who remain in their guilt. Lest Moses (or us) thinks that somehow we're righteous enough to be in the presence of God's holy glory and goodness on our own, God places Moses in the cleft of a rock to shield him. Who do you suppose that Rock of Ages was foreshadowing? Dig Deeper So many people have a warped, lopsided view of God. Some associate God as a genie in the sky dispensing goodness and blessing on anyone who asks, while others see Him only as a grouchy curmudgeon crushing people for the smallest infraction. Yet at one of the lowest points of his life, Moses resists both of those extreme caricatures, and asks God for something very simple, yet life changingly profound. He ask God to "teach me your ways so that I may know you." Of all the attributes God could have responded with, God shows Moses His goodness, and in His goodness God is fully merciful AND fully just. No creature in heaven or earth can do this, but God can and did by pouring out His justice on His Son so that He could show you His amazing grace and mercy. AAA Prayer (About) ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: The LORD, the LORD, compassionate and gracious, yet who punishes the guilty; ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Ask God to display His glory and goodness to you (be careful, this is a dangerous thing to ask for if you're not prepared to align your life with it!!) ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: Read the New Testament in a year, a chapter a day - Acts 3

covenant relationship with their God and how Abraham was told many years before to “walk before God” (Gen. 17 A second part of this phrase is also joined with this request over and over, giving the purpose for the WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you will be sanctified by the truth, for God’s Word is truth and life (John 17:17) ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: Read the New Testament in a year!

fretting about them; ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: Read the New Testament in a year, a chapter a day - John 17

Moses says that God “created the world”; and John says that “all things were created by the Word,” which Yesterday we read the beginning of Jesus' prayer in John 17.

NIV) 16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 Dig Deeper Yesterday we read from Matthew 3 on Jesus going to John the Baptist to be baptized. While we are reading about baptism two days in a row, we should note that the baptism John was administering John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance.

John spares us the logistic details here, not explaining if the spotlight moved from one individual to What's important in today's passage is another aspect that's conspicuously missing from John's account John tells of a second book: the book of life , and anyone whose name was not found written in the book If that we're the case, certainly John would mention those who passed the King's judgment. Those names written in the book of life are welcomed into the new heaven and new earth that John goes

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17   Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. 18  When Simon saw When Peter & John give the Spirit by laying on their hands (Luke refers here to Spiritual gifts, not

John's utilization of adjectives increases, however, to describe what he sees next. The scene, John writes, is like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband . Any groom or father of the bride can appreciate the words John conveys this vision to us with! But John really doesn't tell us anything about what life will be like. John simply reports what he's been told by the One who was seated on the throne: "Behold, I am making

Then, on this mountain, Peter, James, and John saw Jesus speaking with two prominent Old Testament prophets As He states within the sermon of the mount in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish power of God to save: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17).” prophet and teacher, the Word who became flesh who revealed the glory of God full of grace and truth (John