[Dailydevo] Daily Devotion Friday December 15, 2006

[Barry Ludwig]

Daily Devotion Friday December 15, 2006

The Daily Devotions for the next three weeks pastor Ludwig will focus on
each word of the phrase, Jesus Is Coming. This week we look at IS.

 

John 8:57-59

The Jews then said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have  you
seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before
Abraham was, I  am." So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid
himself, and went out of the temple.  

 

As a young boy I thought that what really ticked off Jesus' contemporaries
in this text was his bad grammar. I had an energetic-idealist 5th grade
English teacher who would get tears in her eyes when we abused our tenses
and tortured our vocabulary. You could get her close to a complete emotional
collapse with words like, "irregardless" or the phrase, "me and Dennis was
just playing."  We became experts at inflicting pain upon Mrs. Harris.

 

It was not a stretch for me to assume that Jesus was doing the very same
thing to correct Hebrew speaking members of his society.  He was obviously
mixing his tenses. Only when I began the serious study of the Biblical text
did it become clear to me that Jesus was trying to rile his contemporaries,
but not with bad grammar.

 

In the Old Testament, the personal name of God means "I Am" (or something
close to it).  Jesus is making a claim to divinity here. He claims a status
greater than Abraham.  Jesus is God.  If that is true, then all the rules
change. If it is not a matter of bad grammar but good theology, then that
means I am loved, I am set free, I have a future. What great news.

How is your grammar?

 

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