# 386 Stunned By the Grace of God

The Book of Genesis

Day 386

Ge 41: 32 "And the dream was repeated to Pharaoh twice because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass.

We  are taking a little break from the study in Genesis to pursue the importance of repetition in the Scriptures. In particular we are looking at the “verily, verilies” found in the Gospel of John. When God repeats things, He is merely underlining or highlighting them for us. He gives them an extra sense of urgency.

Today we will look at Joh 8:58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.  59 Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

We get a double whammy of truth here as Jesus not only underlines His eternal existence, but in using the term “I Am,” He claims to be the Yahweh of the Old Testament. He claims to be God!

We first hear this term in the Bible with Moses at the burning bush in  Ex 3:13,14, “Then Moses said to God, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?"  14 And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

Oh, the Jews knew exactly what Jesus was saying here, and they immediately picked up stones to throw at Him to kill Him. Let’s not be too hard on them though, they were only doing what they perceived what the Law told them to do to blasphemers. Le 24:16 says, “And whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall certainly stone him, the stranger as well as him who is born in the land. When he blasphemes the name of the LORD, he shall be put to death.”

Since they did not believe that the Father had sent Jesus, they regarded His words as blasphemous! (Sometimes I shudder to think what I might have done had I been there with them!) But rather than getting bogged down on what I might’ve done, let’s just use this occasion for thanksgiving to God and His graceful revelation  of Jesus to us as the Christ the Son of the Living God!

Joh 6:44 says,  "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

This whole incident should make us pause and consider how blessed we are to have the gift of faith in Jesus.  I mean just imagine such a commotion in our world today. If we were religious people like these Jews, we more than likely would’ve been scrambling for stones to throw along with the crowd, or if we were irreligious, we might notice the commotion and just pass by, writing it off as another display of religious fanaticism!

Either way, we should be stunned by the grace of God that has saved wretches like us, and if we were to throw anything, let it be us, as we throw ourselves at the feet of Jesus where we receive His undeserved mercy unto salvation!