January 15 John 11:1-44 tells the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It’s a familiar story for those of us who have been around church a while. It reveals the Lord’s authority over death and demonstrates His compassion for His friends. It also contains the Bible’s shortest verse, the famous two-word passage: “Jesus…
January 12 I was saved for almost a decade before hearing about the reality of “eternal security.” One day a friend said something about “once saved, always saved,” and I scoffed. Back then I could not imagine knowing that I would make it into heaven when I died. In a desire to secure my salvation,…
January 11 Chapter 9 reveals Jesus’ sixth miracle in the Gospel of John: the healing of another disabled man on the Sabbath. We also discover a stark contrast between the cause of this man’s disability and that of the thirty-eight-year paralytic Jesus healed in John 5: The paralyzed man was disabled for some unspecified sin. This…
January 10 Have you ever heard a skeptic claim, “Jesus never claimed to be God.”? I agree. Jesus never claimed to be God in so many words. He didn’t have to make the claim outright. Look at how people around Him responded to what He said and did. Look at John 8:48-58. The Jewish leaders…
January 9 Throughout John 7, we see people arguing over Jesus’ identity. Is He the Messiah? Could He be the One? Besides the questions, people also expressed their opinions: “He’s a good man.” (v. 12) “No, on the contrary, he’s deceiving the people.” (v. 12) The Jewish leaders asked, “How is this man so learned,…
John 6 Did you know that the feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle that occurs in all four Gospels? Jesus feeds five thousand men with only five barley loaves and two fish, which at that time was a poor man’s meal. (Wheat bread was the food of the wealthy.) As the scene…
January 6 Ordinarily, today would be a “free day” from our Bible reading and devotional, but I wanted to circle back and elaborate further on John 5. A friend asked me about a statement regarding the man Jesus encountered at the Pool of Bethesda. Yesterday, I said:“This man was disabled for thirty-eight years. John doesn’t…
The schedule for our daily Bible readings can be found here. The schedule is based on five days on, then two days off. It will take about five minutes each day to read that day’s scheduled reading. The devotionals will take an additional five minutes to read. Depending on how quickly you read … and…
January 5 Jesus encounters a disabled man near the Temple in Northeastern Jerusalem. It seems there was a belief that the Pool of Bethesda would occasionally stir, and the first disabled person who was able to get into the pool would be healed of their illness. John gives us this information as a description, not…
January 4 We expect that Jesus would minister to God’s covenant people, the Jews. However, we rarely think about Jesus’ ministry outside the Jewish household of faith. John 4 records Jesus’ outreach to both Samaritans and Gentiles. John shows the universal reach of the Gospel. Jesus Ministers to a Samaritan Woman John tells us that…