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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Mark 3-4

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 12:39-42
Jesus: You wicked and promiscuous generation—you are looking for signs, are you? The only sign you will be given is the sign of the prophet Jonah. Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish, as the Son of Man will spend three days and three nights in the belly of the earth. One day, the people of Nineveh will rise up in judgment and will condemn your present generation—for the Ninevites turned from sin to God when they heard Jonah preach, and now One far greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will also stand in judgment and condemn this generation—for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom. And today One greater and wiser than Solomon is among you.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Sometimes I hear people say, “It would be easier to believe if Jesus were here.” Or, “If I could just see Him I could believe.” But you know what? That is a real cop out. I’ll tell you why. If anyone should have a hard time believing it was those who saw Him in the flesh. Jesus came at the right time and lived among us. He showed Himself to be God incarnate, the perfect sacrifice for our sins. But He preached a radical message. If you really listen to His words, He said some things that really upset the apple carts of His day.

Jesus came on the heels of a rebellion that Rome just quelled in Judah. The reason they had such a large army there was because these Jews revolted against Rome and tried to govern themselves…again. Another of their number declared he was their Messiah, their deliverer and had come to free them from the oppression of the Roman government. This Messiah and his followers died a horrible death as the Roman soldiers crushed the rebellion and stationed their cohorts across the countryside.

Now Jesus comes. But instead of revolt against Rome, He preaches love and something of a revolt against the religious rules and regulations that the Sanhedrin put in place for decades. He disrupted the religious norm, not the political norm. He came to bring peace to men’s hearts, not war in the nation. Yet Jesus let His followers declare Him to be the long awaited Messiah. He didn’t make the proclamation Himself, but let His works and His words point to the prophecies fulfilled by His coming.

To many of those who lived when Jesus came, He was just another prophet. Just another rebel making a name for Himself. Jesus was just another man doing things around the countryside. Until they stopped and listened to His words and looked back at the scriptures and put together words of the prophets with the actions of Jesus, no one saw in Him the fulfillment of the prophecies that pointed to the long awaited Messiah. Until the scribes, Pharisees, and Saducees could lay aside their hatred and compare their readings with Jesus’ actions, they would not see Him as anyone other than another rebel about to upset the delicate balance they tried to hold between their frail theocracy and the domaneering dictatorship of the Romans.

But what about us? We live on this side of the cross. We have at our fingertips 2,000 years of history. Unless you’ve studied the history of the Jewish people, you probably can’t name the eight or ten rebels who claimed their Messiahship. In fact, you probably can’t name the rebels that grew up to try to overthrow their shackles during the 400 silent years of the Bible. But they are there. Over and over, the nation tried to rebuild itself but failed. They remained under the rule of the Persians, the Greeks, then the Romans. They could not shake their chains.

But we have that history if we care to look. We know Jesus is a history fact. We have the scriptures that tell us who He is and what He did. We have the record of Pentecost. We have over 5,000 pieces of the New Testament that date back to within a hundred years of His birth that tell us the same thing. All those manuscripts lasted through the centuries and each copy is the same. The scribes meticulously copied them to ensure the letters and gospels were handed down from generation to generation. What a miracle!

So we have all of the evidence of who Jesus is. We have the stories. We have the testimonies of the disciples and the early church leaders. We have the faith of those early Christians who even suffered martyrdom for Christ. Would they do that if all of it were not true? Would they suffer the kinds of death they faced if Jesus were a farce? I don’t think so.

So we have 2,000 years of historic facts behind us. The Pharisees Jesus spoke to had only His words at the time and the gossip they heard from the uneducated masses that told them about this man who could perform miracles and must be God. We know. We have the evidence. We have the witnesses. We have God’s words handed down to us. What more do we need to believe Jesus is the Son of God? If you don’t believe Him now, like the Pharisees, you probably wouldn’t believe if He stood in front of you. What do you need to do about it? Exercise a little faith in Him. That’s all. Stop doubting and believe.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
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