Latest / The Daily Word / May 4 – When God Answers with a Question
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night, whatever time you're joining us. Welcome ⁓ the Daily Word podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Cory Barnes. It's my privilege to pastor our Catawba campus. ⁓ so excited to be sitting down with you to do another devotion based out of today's New Testament portion. ⁓ of the Bible reading plan that we are joining together in on as a church family. Today is May the 4th and I will be resisting Star Wars references that draw to do those. I'm just going to suffice to say may the 4th be with you and we're going to move on. But today is May the 4th and today's New Testament portion was Matthew 21. This chapter is Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We celebrate that every Palm Sunday and Matthew quickly documents how Jesus went into the temple after he entered Jerusalem and what he found there displeased him. So he cleansed the temple. He started turning over the tables of the money changers. He drove out those that were selling doves for people to make sacrifices with. He cleansed the temple and then Jesus began performing miracles. He started healing the blind, the lame, the deaf, and what is he was doing his ministry. It started drawing some attention, so much attention that kids got excited and we're running around the temple crying out, Hosanna, which is kind of similar in this context to the word hallelujah. It's just praise. How who's Xana to the son of David, which was Jesus's messianic. title. So essentially these kids are running around the temple crying out, hallelujah to the Messiah. Hallelujah to the Messiah. So as they were doing that, that caught attention and the chief temple officials heard it. They were offended and they came up to Jesus and the huff and they started asking, do you hear what they're saying? And Jesus replied to them, quoted Psalm eight, out of the mouth of babes and nursing, emphasis, you have perfected praise, kind of dismisses them and shuts them down for getting all up in a huff about the kids. Jesus leaves. And when he comes back to the temple to minister to the next day, the chief priest who had confronted Jesus the day before they had gone and they had gotten back up. They had gotten the elders of Israel and together they came and they confronted Jesus and they asked him, by what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority to teach here, to minister here, to do these healings, all these things that you're doing. And when we read this passage, we normally sit back and we think that these guys have some nerve to come and talk to Jesus like that. Who are they to challenge Jesus? But the truth is that's actually somewhat of a valid question. mean, these guys are the ones that are in charge of stewarding the temple. These are the chief priests who are looking over what is happening there. They're the ones that are responsible for what people are doing in the temple. The elders are the ones that are responsible for overseeing Israel. And mean we can we can acknowledge the fact that they weren't doing a particularly good job since they were letting in money changers and Dove sellers and they weren't holding to the sanctity of the temple they were allowing those practices to be done there so they weren't doing the best job but they were the ones that were responsible for that so it actually makes sense that they would ask Jesus the question by whose authority are you doing this now we can probably imagine they didn't ask him the most humble They probably came up with their chest puffed up and they probably came up very indignant and upset with him so so we can imagine that but What stood out to me was Jesus's answer and that came in verses 24 and 25 I also will ask you one thing which if you tell me I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things the baptism of John Where was it from From heaven or from men? ⁓ So what Jesus did was he answer their question. Jesus actually replied to them ⁓ with a question ⁓ of his Have you ever that sometimes God does that in our lives? Sometimes he answers a question with a question. Now we often see this done when people demand answers from the creator of the universe. Like I'm looking at you, Job. ⁓ But God will answer with a question sometimes. But sometimes even when we do have valid questions, good questions that we ask with humility, God sometimes still answers questions with a questions. Sometimes he does that when we're asking a huff and he's asking questions to put us in our place. But other times it's because we don't actually need. the answer to the question we're asking, we need an entirely different question. We covered the fact when we did a series called God's Got Questions a little while back that when God asks a question, it's not because he doesn't know the answer, but it's because he knows that we don't know the answer. So when we, when God asks us a question, he's often trying to show us something and illuminate something to us. so that's our observation portion ⁓ of today's ⁓ devotion. is that sometimes God answers a question with another question. And we can get frustrated by that. Like, I just want to know what is this that's happening? What is that that's going on? Will you do this? Can you do that? And then God asks us another question and it can get frustrating, but are we prepared to trust Him that He knows best what we need and that when He asks us a question, that's actually the answer we need and that we can find that answer. So our application is that we perhaps should look at some of the questions we've been holding before the Lord. Like we asked him this question. He still hasn't getting given us an answer. Well, have you asked him another question? Am I asking the right questions? Is there a question you want to ask me? What, what do you want to do in this conversation? Lord. Let's pray. Father, I just thank you that every time we come to your word, you start bringing things out of it that speak to us right where we are today. And some of us have been holding questions before you that we asked and we aren't getting answers. Sometimes that's because you've already asked us a question that we didn't want to answer. And we kind of let the conversation drop there. And for others of us, maybe it's because we're not asking the right question and you want to show us that question. And for others of us, it may be because we got above ourselves. We got the big head and started asking the creator of the universe questions out of line. And maybe you have another question for us that you want to ask. Whatever the case may be with our questions that we're bringing to, we thank you Lord that you know the answers we need. And we pray that you would reveal those things, that you would walk with us, that you would talk with us. We love you and we thank you that you want to lead us, you want to guide us, you want to get everything we need into our hands. We just praise you and we thank you Lord that you are directing our path and that your word is a light, is a lamp. unto our paths so that we can see where we're going. We thank you that you're leading us. We thank you that you ask us questions. And we thank you, Lord, that when we need it, you put us back into our place. We thank you, Jesus, that you are so wise and you know so much better than we do. We acknowledge that you are God and we are not. And we pray that you would help us to always ask you the right questions. We love you, Jesus. We really do. Amen.