Tag Archives: 11.10.22 Bible Study

Daily Bible Study

November 10, 2022 Bible Study — Jesus Prayed For All Who Follow Him

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 17-18.

A few weeks back I heard a sermon where the preacher said that our prayers should primarily be for our fellow believers.  I am really oversimplifying what he said here because he did not say that we should not pray for unbelievers (his point was not that we should pray for unbelievers less than we do, but that we should pray for believers much more than we do).  He based saying that on the fact that most of the prayers mentioned in the Bible are for believers (a large percentage of the prayers mentioned in the Bible are in Paul’s letters).  I fully agreed with everything that preacher said in that sermon, except his emphasis on focusing our prayers on believers (I didn’t exactly disagree, I just wasn’t sure that he was correct).  Which brings me to today’s passage.  In His final prayer before His arrest Jesus prays for His disciples, both those who followed Him during His ministry and those who followed Him based on the testimony of those who followed Him.

Jesus identifies those for whom He is praying by saying that they accepted the words from the Father which Jesus had given to them.  He prays that the Father protect them, but not by taking them out of the world, or even protecting them from the world.  Rather Jesus prays that God the Father will protect us (yes, those of us today who call upon His name are among those for whom He was praying) from the evil one.  We have been sent into the world by Jesus, but we are not to be of the world.  Jesus prayed that all believers would be brought to complete unity.  That unity should lead us to live our lives so that the world would know that He was sent by God.  I struggle with this because there are those who use Jesus’ call for unity among believers to interfere with rooting out of false teaching.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

October 11, 2022 Bible Study — The Warning Signs That We Are Heading Towards Hypocrisy

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Matthew 23-24.

The passage begins with Jesus condemning the Pharisees for hypocrisy.  The key phrase in what Jesus said in this section was this, “they do not practice what they preach.”  Jesus goes on to explain that much of what the Pharisees, and other hypocrites, do is intended to cause others to honor them.  I want to write about some of the types of hypocrisy Jesus points out.  We should not ask others to address us by honorifics, such as “Father”, “Rabbi”, “Teacher”, “Reverend”, or “Pastor”. Nor should we address others by those honorifics.  All followers of Christ are equal, do not hold others up above yourself, and do not hold yourself above others.  The next one I want to look at is kind of interesting.  Jesus talks about considering an oath sworn on the temple as non-binding, but one sworn on the gold of the temple is binding.  Now why would someone make such distinctions?  It seems to me that the purpose would be to able to make an oath which might sound binding, but which you did not count as binding.  In other words, the purpose of such a distinction is to deceive people.  The final type of hypocrisy was the things done for the sake of appearance.  Things like washing the outside of a cup but leaving the inside untouched.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.