Reflective Bible Study

On the night Jesus was arrested, all four gospels describe how He goes with His eleven remaining disciples to a place just outside of Jerusalem called Gethsemane. While there, during the last moments Jesus has before His arrest, and following His last big teaching opportunity with the disciples, Jesus does something that is worth paying attention to.

For our episode this week, we’ll be focusing in on Matthew’s version of this event, though the idea we’ll be focusing in on is found in more than just Matthew’s gospel. This event is found in Matthew, chapter 26, and for our time together, we will be reading from the Good News Translation. Starting in verse 36, Matthew tells us:

³⁶ Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” ³⁷ He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. Grief and anguish came over him, ³⁸ and he said to them, “The sorrow in my heart is so great that it almost crushes me. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

³⁹ He went a little farther on, threw himself face downward on the ground, and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, take this cup of suffering from me! Yet not what I want, but what you want.”

⁴⁰ Then he returned to the three disciples and found them asleep; and he said to Peter, “How is it that you three were not able to keep watch with me for even one hour? ⁴¹ Keep watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

⁴² Once more Jesus went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cup of suffering cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.” ⁴³ He returned once more and found the disciples asleep; they could not keep their eyes open.

⁴⁴ Again Jesus left them, went away, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. ⁴⁵ Then he returned to the disciples and said, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look! The hour has come for the Son of Man to be handed over to the power of sinners. ⁴⁶ Get up, let us go. Look, here is the man who is betraying me!”

During the last hours, or maybe even minutes, before Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, arrives with the mob to arrest Jesus, Jesus spends the last moments in prayer regarding the mission and trial He is about to face. While some people might read Jesus’ prayer and believe that He is pushing back on God’s mission for Him to face the cross, I think that this is not the essence of Jesus’ prayer here. While the cross was coming up on the horizon not even 24 hours later, I believe Jesus was praying for something happening that was much more present than a fear of the cross.

In Jesus’ first prayer, found in verse 39, He prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, take this cup of suffering from me! Yet not what I want, but what you want.” Chances are that His prayer was a little longer than two sentences, but perhaps this was all these three disciples heard before falling asleep.

This prayer contains two important ideas for us to consider.

The first idea is that Jesus conditionally asks for a cup of suffering to be taken from Him – specifically only if it is possible. This implies that Jesus was already facing suffering of some kind. Never before in Jesus’ ministry do we get the idea that Jesus was fearful, but perhaps this was the moment fear entered His life. However, following the mob’s arrival and the trial, we don’t see Jesus display any fear, so later on during Jesus’ trial, we are unlikely to find any moments of fear.

Part of me wonders if the arrival of Jesus and His disciples to Gethsemane marked the start of the Father pulling His presence away from Jesus, while Jesus was emotionally and spiritually taking on the sins of everyone who had ever lived. If this were the case, I could see Jesus’ time in Gethsemane before His arrest being much more difficult than the road of pain and abuse leading to the cross.

However, there is a second idea in Jesus’ first prayer that deserves our attention. Jesus finishes off by saying, “Yet not what I want, but what you want.”

In the midst of a trial so big that we cannot even begin to imagine it’s total size, Jesus asks the question about if there was another way, but He frames the response He wants to receive as simply God’s will being done and not His own. While God could have swept Jesus up to Heaven at that very moment, and wiped the universe clean to start over from that point, it wasn’t part of God’s plan to give up at the most difficult moment the Godhead had ever faced. We might think that it was difficult for Jesus but not for God the Father or the Holy Spirit for that 24-48 hour period of time, but that would be a mistake.

If God truly is known as a Father, watching His Son face death would be one of the hardest things He could do, especially knowing that while He could stop it from happening, any delay would lengthen the pain Jesus was in, and abandoning the mission would prove Satan’s case against God that said God was unfair and unrealistic.

In this prayer, we see Jesus submitting to God when times get tough, and while I know the Father wanted to help Him, God knew that any help would validate Satan’s charge against the Godhead.

After Jesus returns, wakes the disciples up, asks them again to keep watch, He returns and prays a second prayer, which is similar to the first. In verse 42, Jesus prayed, “My Father, if this cup of suffering cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.”

Jesus’ second prayer includes more courage and strength than the first. God the Father had probably answered Jesus’ prayers much more quickly than it appeared to be on this night, and because of this, I wonder if Jesus, who hadn’t seen or heard anything change following His first prayer, then shifted His prayers towards accepting the mission of suffering.

Both times Jesus frames that what He wants is God’s will do be done, and in both cases, Jesus says these words knowing that it will bring suffering into His life. While Matthew doesn’t quote Jesus’ third prayer, he tells us that it was similar to the first two prayers.

We can learn from Jesus in what we see in Gethsemane. While all the disciples were facing temptation in those hours with Jesus, I believe the greatest temptations were being pressed towards Jesus Himself.

The temptations likely centered on the ideas that Jesus’ sacrifice would not be worth it, it wouldn’t be accepted by God, no one on earth would care that He had died, and His life would ultimately be wasted.

In these moments of temptation, Jesus surrenders, but while we might surrender by doing whatever thing we are being tempted to do, Jesus surrendered into doing God’s will. It was not God’s will that Jesus would abandon humanity when things got tough, so regardless of Jesus’ prayers, as long as He framed Himself wanting to stay within God’s will and the plan they had set up, no help from Heaven would come.

When we face temptation, the best place for us to surrender is into doing God’s will. While this is clearly easier to say than it is to do, our prayers for help should always be prefaced with God’s will being done.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I want to leave with you this week:

Continue to seek God first in your life and intentionally submit to His will. When temptation comes, choose to surrender to God and let Him direct and protect you as He sees fit. Sometimes relief will come, but other times, it may feel like we are facing temptation alone. However, God will not abandon us like He never abandoned Jesus. Jesus was raised from the dead at the perfect time, and this is proof that even if we experience feeling like God is silent, He is never truly absent.

Also, be sure to always pray and study the Bible for yourself in order to strengthen your connection with God. While not every study time will be filled with insights or feelings of closeness with God, the only way to ever get any personal insights or to feel close with God is through intentionally drawing near to Him in personal study. Prayer and personal study are much more important for each of us than simply listening to a pastor or podcaster.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or be tempted into giving up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As Jesus wraps up talking with His disciples on the night He was betrayed and arrested, Jesus repeats His prediction that they all would abandon Him before the night has finished. While many times throughout Jesus’ ministry, He said some challenging things that caused people to leave Him, every time people left Him prior to this night, some people always stuck with Him. However, on the night Jesus was betrayed, He predicts a different outcome, and that outcome is that all of His followers would abandon Him.

Everyone can look in their past back and identify a point when you have felt abandoned or betrayed. If you think that your life up to this point has not faced this type of rejection, then I would be worried, not because you are fooling yourself, but instead, because you are either living alone, apart from everyone, or abandonment and/or betrayal is coming at some point in your future. However, while feeling abandoned or rejected feels horrible, you are definitely not alone in feeling this way.

I’ll be the first to say that I have felt this way in the past, at more points in time than I would have liked, and I imagine in some way, shape, or form, everyone has experienced feelings of abandonment or rejection to some degree or another.

While it is crazy to think about the ideal, popular person being abandoned, this is exactly what Jesus predicts in our passage for this episode. Jesus was the most famous and infamous person alive during that time period, and because He had avoided every trick, trap, and question trying to knock Him off of His mission, I suspect some people believed there was nothing that could happen to Him.

Our passage for this episode happens during the night Jesus is arrested, but it takes place several hours before Jesus is arrested and His remaining disciples scatter. However, in this passage, Jesus forewarns the disciples about what will happen later that night, and He also says something powerful for anyone who has ever felt abandoned or alone.

Let’s read what Jesus tells His followers. Our passage for this episode is found in the gospel of John, chapter 16, and we will read it using the New International Version. Starting in verse 25, Jesus tells the remaining disciples who are with Him:

²⁵ “Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. ²⁶ In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. ²⁷ No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. ²⁸ I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

²⁹ Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech. ³⁰ Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

³¹ “Do you now believe?” Jesus replied. ³² “A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.

³³ “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

In this passage, Jesus promises us three things that are significant to our discussion about feeling abandoned or alone.

The first promise is how Jesus concludes this passage, and this promise has two parts. In the middle of verse 33, Jesus says, “In this world you will have trouble.” This tells me that there is no getting away from trouble, and in the context of this discussion, this trouble may include feelings of abandonment and/or rejection. However, Jesus is quick to finish the verse by saying, “Take heart! I have overcome the world.”

The powerful first promise states that even though trouble, abandonment, rejection, hurt, or pain come, Jesus is bigger than these feelings because Jesus has overcome the world that includes all these symptoms of sin.

This leads us to the next promise for us to focus on, which happened to have been shared one verse earlier. In verse 32, Jesus finishes by saying, “You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.” With these words, Jesus recognized that even when everyone He thought was a friend, follower, or disciple had run away, He was never truly alone, because God the Father and His Spirit would be with Him. Even while hanging on the cross, even if Jesus didn’t feel God’s presence, He still knew God was there. His dying breath is directed to God when He says, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)

This second truth is special for you and I too because as followers of Jesus, we too can claim this promise that being alone is never truly alone, because God the Father and His Spirit are with us.

However, what if you are a little unsure about the Father? After all, isn’t God the Father the deity behind all the Old Testament war and punishments? Isn’t the God of the Old Testament a mean God who is always on the lookout for when we mess up and fail? Didn’t Jesus come to convince the Father to love us?

All of these questions are false according to Jesus. In our passage, Jesus tells us what the Father thinks of us, and this truth is found within the third big promise worth focusing on in Jesus’ words. Move back to near the beginning of what we read, in verse 27, Jesus says, “The Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” God the Father loves those who love Jesus and believe that Jesus came from God.

If that promise were not enough, one of the most well known Bible verses also clearly states the Father’s love. John 3:16 begins by saying, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.” God in this verse must refer to the Father, because He gave His Son, and Jesus declares that He is the Son.

This ultimately means that on the night of Jesus’ betrayal, shortly before all the disciples scatter and Jesus is left alone, Jesus gives us a powerful picture into God the Father’s love for us, and Jesus models the truth for us that when we love and believe in Him, we are never alone.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do in one way or another, intentionally seek God first in your life. If you haven’t yet chosen to believe that Jesus came from God, choose to believe this today. Intentionally choose to place God first in your life and place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus and what Jesus accomplished for each of us on the cross.

However, don’t choose this only because I said to. Instead, as I also always challenge you to do, intentionally pray and study the Bible for yourself, keeping your eyes open for ways the Bible points to Jesus. When reading the Bible looking for pictures and descriptions of Jesus, you will be surprised how many times Jesus shows up.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

On the night Jesus was arrested, as He and His disciples were walking to the garden where He would pray, Jesus began telling the remaining eleven men what they could expect to face in the coming years, and He encouraged them that they would not be alone. Of all the four gospels, only John’s gospel shares in detail the message Jesus told the group of disciples.

Matthew, who was also there, for some reason did not include it in his gospel, and perhaps the reason for this was that Matthew was writing to a different group of people at a different point in the first century. It is likely that Matthew knew that either his audience did not need to hear Jesus’ last message to the disciples before His death, or that something in Jesus’ message would keep someone in Matthew’s audience from choosing Jesus.

While reading what John tells us Jesus said, it’s possible that the part of Jesus’ message we will be focusing on in this episode might be one reason why Matthew chose to leave out this message from his gospel record. Our passage is found in the gospel of John, chapter 15, and we will be reading from the New American Standard Bible translation. Beginning in verse 18, John tells us that Jesus told His disciples:

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. ¹⁹ If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. ²¹ But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ He who hates Me hates My Father also. ²⁴ If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. ²⁵ But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’

Let’s pause reading here for a moment to draw our attention onto a really big idea. In this portion of Jesus’ last message, He points the disciples to a powerful idea that the more openly for Jesus that we live, the more opposition from the world we will face.

It is a strange paradox in that we could take the nicest individual, and place them doing one of the most noble acts we could imagine, let’s say saving starving children in Africa. If this is their mission, many people would rally behind it and there would be little to no opposition. But if this person adjusts their mission to include Jesus, while they still would have support, they would also attract hostility from others.

The more openly this nice individual uses Jesus as the reason for his compassion for these children, the more polarizing his ministry will be. Some opposition he might face would be people saying that he is trying to convert or brainwash the children he claims to help into believing what they believe to be the Christian lie. Others might say this nice individual is trying to earn his salvation through what he is doing.

While the actions of this individual never changed, the more openly for Jesus that one lives, the more opposition from the world the person will face.

However, while Jesus shares with us this warning, He also tells us that we are not alone. When we openly increase how we are living for Jesus and including Him in our lives, Jesus continues in verse 26 by promising us a Helper. Jesus tells the disciples:

²⁶ “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, ²⁷ and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.

Jesus promised His disciples that a Helper would come from the Father, and that this Helper is also known as the Spirit of Truth. Jesus also says that the role of this Helper-Spirit is to testify about Him. God the Father, through the Holy Spirit – another name for this Helper-Spirit of Truth – will testify and teach the truth about Jesus. The Holy Spirit draws nearer to us the nearer we draw to Jesus – living for Him.

I wonder if at this point some of the disciples wondered why Jesus was sharing this with them. Jesus continues at the start of chapter 16 by saying:

^16:1 “These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. ² They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. ³ These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me. ⁴ But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them. These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.

In this passage, we have come full circle. We can see why Jesus shared this message with His followers on the night He was arrested, and we also have a reason why Matthew may have chosen to exclude this info from his gospel letter.

John includes this message from Jesus because he is writing to Christians, giving them a message of encouragement, and challenging them to grow their faith. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are written with the goal of sharing about Jesus with someone who might not yet know who He is.

This message from Jesus in John’s gospel emphasizes that for all of Jesus’ followers living through the centuries, trouble and opposition will come. There is no way around this because Satan opposes Jesus – and Satan is happy to give power, status, and fame to those who do anything to distract people away from who Jesus is and what Jesus would want from us and for us.

The promise Jesus shares is that when opposition comes, we are not alone – we have the Holy Spirit. We should also not be surprised when opposition comes because the leadership and system in place when Jesus walked the earth was opposed to Him. If the world opposed Jesus for living for God, it will oppose us for living for Jesus.

The choice we all get to make from Jesus’ message is whether we will choose Jesus and opposition in this life, with the promise of a new life with God in the next life, or whether we will reject or hide Jesus so that we will be accepted in this life and risk losing the promised new life with God.

Living openly for Jesus is the key to living the Christian life. While the decision to put your faith, belief and trust in Jesus is a private matter, open Christian living is how you know your faith is certain. Facing opposition in this world is one test you can use to gauge whether you are on the right track.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Be sure to decide if you want to live for Jesus and face opposition in this life. While for some making this decision isn’t easy, this decision is the most logical decision anyone can make when looking from the perspective of eternity. After all, what are a few short years of opposition and rejection in the face of a dozen millennia of years with God? If you choose God and eternity, then be sure to seek Him first each day, and then openly live for Him in a practical, loving way.

Also, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself so you can truly know what God is like. While living for God will be an incredible adventure in spite of the opposition, be sure that you are connecting with Him personally each day. A pastor or a podcaster can point you in a good direction, but only the Bible can teach you about how God has moved throughout history, how He doesn’t change, and how this makes Him trustworthy.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or stumble away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue moving through the gospels looking at the night Jesus is betrayed and arrested, leading up to this betrayal, Jesus spends some time talking with His disciples. After Jesus had eaten the Last Supper with His followers, and right before they leave to go to the garden where Jesus will pray before being betrayed, Jesus challenges His followers with a powerful statement. While some might be quick to discount this statement as being only applicable for those in the first century, if we look at the context for this challenge, I doubt any dedicated follower of Jesus living today would want to give up what Jesus promises within the context of this challenge.

Let’s dive into our passage and uncover what Jesus challenges His followers with. Instead of slowly leading up to this challenge, Jesus actually opens our passage by stating this challenge in very clear, simple terms, before then including the promise in the verses following it.

With that said, let’s read our passage, which comes from the gospel of John, chapter 14, using the God’s Word translation. Starting in verse 15, John tells us Jesus told His followers:

¹⁵ “If you love me, you will obey my commandments. ¹⁶ I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper who will be with you forever. ¹⁷ That helper is the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it doesn’t see or know him. You know him, because he lives with you and will be in you.

¹⁸ “I will not leave you all alone. I will come back to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. You will live because I live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I am in my Father and that you are in me and that I am in you. ²¹ Whoever knows and obeys my commandments is the person who loves me. Those who love me will have my Father’s love, and I, too, will love them and show myself to them.”

²² Judas (not Iscariot) asked Jesus, “Lord, what has happened that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”

²³ Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will go to them and make our home with them. ²⁴ A person who doesn’t love me doesn’t do what I say. I don’t make up what you hear me say. What I say comes from the Father who sent me.

²⁵ “I have told you this while I’m still with you. ²⁶ However, the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything. He will remind you of everything that I have ever told you.

²⁷ “I’m leaving you peace. I’m giving you my peace. I don’t give you the kind of peace that the world gives. So don’t be troubled or cowardly. ²⁸ You heard me tell you, ‘I’m going away, but I’m coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I’m going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am.

²⁹ “I’m telling you this now before it happens. When it does happen, you will believe.³⁰ The ruler of this world has no power over me. But he’s coming, so I won’t talk with you much longer. ³¹ However, I want the world to know that I love the Father and that I am doing exactly what the Father has commanded me to do. Get up! We have to leave.”

In this passage, Jesus’ first words are the clear, direct, straight-forward challenge: “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” Ten times in these 17 verses, Jesus uses the word “love”, and in all ten instances, the love Jesus is talking about is us loving Him, us loving God the Father, or us receiving love from Jesus, or God the Father.

Three times Jesus connects obedience to Him to be the same as loving Him. Verse 15, which opened our passage by challenging us, says, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” Then if that wasn’t enough, the first part of verse 21 says, “Whoever knows and obeys my commandments is the person who loves me.” And to top it off, in verse 23, Jesus again restates this in the opening to His reply, saying, “Those who love me will do what I say.”

There is no easy way to get around Jesus’ challenge, except for people who want to debate exactly what Jesus’ commands are while working to exclude commands they don’t want or like. The point most people who want to debate Jesus’ commands start from is with the “new” command Jesus gave earlier that evening. Part way during the Last Supper Jesus ate with His followers, He gives them the new command to love one another.

However, this then leaves people to debate whether Jesus’ command to love one another replaces or is added to other commands Jesus taught, and whether the commands Jesus shared are added to or whether they replace what the Old Testament taught. In other words, this debate centers around whether Jesus’ commands are added to or whether they replace the Old Testament Ten Commandments that God spoke from Mount Sinai, and/or whether Jesus’ commands are added to or whether they replace the rest of the Mosaic law.

However, while preparing for this episode, a different question entered my mind. While preparing for this episode, I had the question enter my mind about whether Jesus was the voice that spoke the Ten Commandments while the children of Israel were camped around Mount Sinai.

With this question, hoping someone had answered or tackled this question before so I could look at what they concluded, I did a quick Google search about this, and the results that returned were fascinating. While I can’t speak to what you would get if you searched for this question today, the results I received did anything but answer my question.

Instead of answering my question, Google pulled together the age-old debate of the relevance of the Ten Commandments, and a surprising number of results that focused exclusively on the Sabbath commandment. Looking through the first 5 or so pages of results, and clicking through to several of the links, I found no websites sharing about Jesus’ role in the Ten Commandments, but instead, Christ-followers debating the relevance of either the whole group of the Ten Commandments, or just the fourth commandment.

In my mind, this is sad. Perhaps the debate over the Ten Commandments’ relevance is more important than the question I asked. However, I doubt this to be true.

If you haven’t guessed this about me, I am the sort of person who likes to look at the context and author of what I’m reading in order to understand their frame of mind. In the case of the Ten Commandments, regardless of whether Jesus was the member of the Godhead to speak them or not, the Author of these commandments is God, and the Author of the Ten Commandments should be our focus, not the commandments themselves. In the case of the times God speaks, how we treat God’s words says more about how important God is in our lives and less about the words themselves.

While I could piece together an argument that says since Jesus is the Word, as John opens His Gospel by illustrating, then the words spoken by God in the Old Testament, including the Ten Commandments, would have been spoken by Jesus. There isn’t really much of a question on whether God spoke the commandments, but John’s introduction is one of the few passages where the case could be made for narrowing God’s speech in the Old Testament down to a single member of the Godhead.

However, I suspect that my question really was a bad question. Perhaps a better question for us to ask ourselves is simply: where did Jesus get His commandments?

We don’t have to look far for the answer, because it happens to be found right at the heart of our passage for this episode. In verse 24, Jesus gives us the answer when He says, “A person who doesn’t love me doesn’t do what I say. I don’t make up what you hear me say. What I say comes from the Father who sent me.”

The question of whether Jesus spoke the Ten Commandments is not relevant when we understand that Jesus received everything He said, taught, preached, and shared from the Father. Regardless of whether you think Jesus’ words replace or overshadow commandments from the Old Testament, recognize that Jesus tells us that what He says comes from the Father – and with this being the case, anytime Jesus references back to Himself, He may be simply speaking on the Father’s behalf. This ultimately means that the Source behind Jesus’ words and commands is God the Father.

Regardless of who spoke the Ten Commandments, or even the commands Jesus shares in the New Testament, we can understand God the Father as the original Author. According to Jesus, we love who we obey. If we love the Father, then we will obey what the Father has commanded. In this case, Jesus is simply an Ambassador, speaking on behalf of the One who sent Him.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to apply the truth Jesus shared about love into your life, starting today. Know that according to Jesus, we love who we obey.

Also, as I always challenge you to do, intentionally pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn what God, the author of life, wants for us and from us. Other people can give you ideas to think about, but other people cannot grow you a personal relationship with Jesus.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!