Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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The One True Church
Chapter 17 – Flesh Versus Spirit
The kingdom of God was the central theme of Jesus’ teaching. He mentioned it around a hundred times. (By contrast, He mentioned church only twice.) The Jews in Jesus’ time had been prepped to anticipate a uniquely glorious kingdom by the prophets – especially by Daniel and John the Baptist.
Daniel 7:13 “I kept looking in the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven
One like a Son of Man was coming,
And He came up to the Ancient of Days
And was presented before Him.
Daniel 7:14 “And to Him was given dominion,
Glory and a kingdom,
That all the peoples, nations and men of every language
Might serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
Which will not pass away;
And His kingdom is one
Which will not be destroyed.
Matthew 3:1 Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying,
Matthew 3:2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Daniel lived in the 6th century BC, but John the Baptist was a contemporary of Jesus. Therefore, the long-term hope Daniel nourished in his fellow Jews was intensified to a near-term expectation by the preaching of John the Baptist.
The Old Testament describes kingdoms of the Jews – even glorious ones, like those of David and Solomon. So, the promise of a kingdom more glorious than all of them was exciting to Jews, to say the least.
In His teaching, Jesus emphasized that the difference in glory was driven by the difference in the nature of the coming kingdom. It was to be spiritual in nature – not fleshly (physical).
John 4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
John 4:22 “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
John 4:23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Even Jesus’ closest disciples had trouble understanding the flesh-spirit difference. But once Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God, they began to see more clearly what He’d been driving at. Moses had directed a fleshly order from earth; Jesus would direct a spiritual order from heaven.
Trying to follow the law of Moses according to the flesh had ultimately gotten Israel nowhere. By contrast, Jesus taught that following that law according to the spirit would reveal riches and related outcomes they’d never imagined. Once the apostles grasped the flesh-spirit difference, they taught it as boldly as Jesus had. Hear Paul press the point:
Romans 8:6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,
Romans 8:7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,
Romans 8:8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
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