Bible Verse of the Day Sunday October 16th, 2022

John 18:6 When Jesus said, "I am he," they drew back and fell to the ground.

We must never forget that our precious Lord and Savior willingly and joyfully went to the Cross of Calvary to pay a sin debt that he did not owe, a debt that we could never pay (Hebrews 12:2).

When they came to arrest Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus knew why they were there. With just three (3) words, He summarized all of the glory, power, and province of the one true God when He said: "I am He." The term "I am" was a bold statement that all Jewish people would have recognized as the declaration of divinity because God told Moses when he was dispatched to Egypt to free the Children of Israel: "tell them I am sent you" (Exodus 3:14).

Jesus had used the name that God had identified Himself to Moses all those many years ago when Moses had turned away in fear of God. So, it is no great surprise that those who came after Jesus that night fell to the ground in worship of Him.

Jesus had used the term of divinity, "I am," ten times in the Gospel of John alone with a specific qualification (John 8:12: 6:35, 51; 10:7,9,11,14; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1&5). Although far too many folks today are looking for an alternate route to eternal life, Jesus made it abundantly clear and unambiguous when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

The statement said that Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life, and the qualification statement was that there was no other way to eternal life except through Him. When the "goon squad" led by the lead conspirator, Judas Iscariot, came to arrest Jesus, the world witnessed the divinity and authority of God in the flesh to skeptical and doubting people. From the beginning of the world as we know it, the Cross was in God's plan of salvation (John 3:16). Jesus described Himself as the Good Shepard who would lay down his life for his sheep (John 10:11).

The conspiracy to arrest Jesus and the crucifixion was not a mistake or something brought about by humankind; it was in the time frame of the grandmaster plan of God that had been in place since the world's creation. What seemed like an unplanned catastrophic and tragic event stood as a rock-solid purpose of God. Something occurring that just made no sense to the world turns out to be the working of Almighty God for the good of the world and the glory of God (Romans 8:28).

John Kempis (1380-1471), the author of "The Imitation of Christ," a well-known Christian devotional book, once wrote: "Without the way, there is no going; without the truth, there is no knowing; without the life, there is no living. I am the way which thou must follow; the truth in which thou must believe; the life for which thou must hope."

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