Please, continue reading a chapter of Proverbs each day. The Proverbs truly are God's wisdom for everyday life (not just everyday in February). Reading Proverbs daily will serve you well as ammunition against the temptations Satan attacks with every day.
But after commenting on the chapters in Proverbs for the past month, starting today I will begin commenting on the March daily readings found in your newsletter. The readings prior to Holy Week take us through the events leading up to Holy Week as recorded in John's Gospel (and as we learned in the Children's Message on Sunday, 'gospel' means 'good news').
Last Wednesday in our Lenten devotion I talked about the festival of Hanukkah. The first verse of today's reading (John 10:22) is the only mention of that festival in the Bible. It is often called "The Festival of Lights" because of a miracle that occurred when God miraculously enabled oil sufficient to keep one candle lit for a day to actually last for 8 days.
In this passage, Jesus points to the many miracles He performed as evidence that He is God in the flesh. I find it kind of funny (in a sad sort of way) that many people say Jesus was merely human and that He never claimed to be anything more. Obviously, they have never read this passage of Scripture. Not only does Jesus claim to be God here, but His enemies want to put Him to death for that very reason: blaspheme, claiming to be God.
The folks who don't believe Jesus is truly God will most often say that he was simply another human being who was a good teacher and a good example. But C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Chrstianity reminds us that we really don't have "good teacher/good example" as an option for Jesus. He did claim to be God, so the only two options we have available are 1) to believe that He is who He said, or 2) believe that He was a raving lunatic - or worse - for claiming to be God when indeed He was not. If He claimed to be God when He was not, He certainly cannot be said to be a good example or a good teacher.
The event we will celebrate on the last day of this month proves that option 1 is the correct one. Jesus truly is who He said: God in the flesh!
God bless your reading,
Pastor David
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