Contents 1. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus as Eternal God...9 2. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus as the Incarnate Christ...20 3. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus at the Beginning of His Ministry...55 4. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus at the Height of His Ministry...111 5. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus as He Moves Toward the Cross...183 6. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus as the Crucified Lamb of God...246 7. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus as the Resurrected Lord...314 8. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus as the Coming King...359 9. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus as Your Personal Savior...378 Scripture Index...383
A Word to Fellow Gazers Turn your eyes upon Jesus. That is exactly what we will be doing for the next 365 days. And there is no better place to look. He is not only the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), but also the answer to our greatest hopes and fears. In Jesus we find meaning for both the present life and the one to come. As a result, His person and ministry are the best place to fix our gaze. How to approach the topic was the major difficulty. At first I thought I should trace His life by focusing on one Gospel. But that would leave so much out. So I then contemplated telling the story through the eyes of all four Gospel writers. But that also was problematic, since the earthly life of Jesus is only an infinitely small fraction of who He is. As a result, I finally decided to use the evidence supplied in both biblical Testaments to trace His life from eternity in the past through eternity in the future. Of course, not all the data could fit into one book. As a result, my treatment centers on nine focal points in Jesus life and ministry. I have arranged the readings in a generally chronological fashion, but not slavishly so. Needless to say, some of the sections are more selective in their content than others. That is especially true for His years of ministry. A year of 365 days is just not enough to do justice to such a life. But I suppose that is good. My hope for each of us is that these 365 days will be a mere beginning of a life dedicated to daily turning our eyes upon Jesus. Meanwhile, my prayer is that you will receive as great a blessing from this year s readings as I did in writing them. In closing, I would like to express appreciation to my wife for typing my handwritten manuscript and to Jeannette Johnson and Gerald Wheeler for shepherding it through the publication process. George R. Knight Rogue River, Oregon DEDICATED TO BONNIE my best friend and wife (in that order) a most wonderful combination.
I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul, 1 Corinthians 2:2, RSV B Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face; And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace. Helen H. Lemmel, in The Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, no. 290 B It would be well for us to spend a thoughtful hour each day in contemplation of the life of Christ. We should take it point by point, and let the imagination grasp each scene, especially the closing ones. Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 83
January 1 Where to Begin? The angel said to them, Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Luke 2:10, 11, RSV. Where to begin the story of Jesus? That s the problem. Of course, we could start with His birth in Bethlehem. But that would miss most of the story. After all, the Bible s portrayal of His 33 years on earth is hardly even the tip of the iceberg of an existence that runs from eternity in the past to eternity in the future. As a result, this devotional on the life of Christ will commence with His story before the Incarnation and close with His ministry after the Ascension, which extends into infinity. The theme song for our journey through this year of beholding our Lord is Helen Lemmel s Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. As part of your daily devotional experience I would suggest that you sing the chorus each day: Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face; And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace. After 365 renditions I guarantee that you will have the words memorized and that they will come to your mind repeatedly throughout the rest of your life. Meanwhile, we need to turn our eyes upon the Jesus set forth in the angel s announcement to the shepherds in Luke 2:10, 11. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the passage is that it refers to the newborn baby as Christ the Lord. That description would have jumped right off the page to the Bible s first readers. After all, Lord is the word used in Greek for Yahweh, the very name of God in the Old Testament. Thus the angel s announcement declared the child as divine. Later, Gentile readers would have picked up the same message, since the pagan world often employed the term to refer to their deities. The term Christ is also an expression of Jesus divinity, being the Greek translation of Messiah, which means anointed one. While one could see a king or priest as anointed, the Jews expected that in due course God would send the anointed one, someone who would do His will in a special way. And what a way! The good news of the angel is that Jesus would become the Savior of all people. Let us rejoice with the angels (verses 13, 14). 10
January 2 Jesus Real Beginning In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1. Here is the real beginning of the Jesus story. Whereas Matthew and Luke commence their Gospels with Jesus miraculous birth and Mark with the inauguration of His ministry, John takes his readers back to the beginning of beginnings. And what was that? A first thought is to go to Genesis 1:1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But that is not where John 1:1 starts. After all, according to verse 3 Jesus already existed before the Genesis creation, being an active agent in it (cf. Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2). As a result, with a stroke of his pen John draws our minds not back to the Creation story of Genesis 1, but to the vast eternity before Creation and the place of Christ the Word within that boundless infinity of time. Ellen White captures the depths of that eternity when she writes that Christ was equal with God, infinite and omnipotent.... He is the eternal, self-existent Son (Evangelism, p. 615). When John says beginning, he means the real beginning before the creation of anything. The apostle goes on to make two other statements about the Word. The first is that He was with God. The flow of the fourth Gospel helps us understand that withness. It pictures Jesus as being at the Father s side (John 1:18), the Father placing everything in His hands (John 3:35), He and the Father being one (John 10:30), and so forth throughout the gospel story. Thus John s second declaration about the Word, when combined with the first, presents Christ as the Word who from all eternity has enjoyed a profound intimacy with the Father. The last declaration about the Word equates Him with God. Here it is important to note that John is not saying that Jesus is the Father. After all, his Gospel presents the two as distinct individuals capable of talking to and about each other. Thus both the Father and the Son are identified in Scripture as God (cf. Heb. 1:8). We might say that They share the same family name (God) but with different functions. Father, as we bow before You in prayer our minds are profoundly affected by the fact that the Baby born as Jesus of Nazareth is none less than eternal God. Thank You for the Gift of all gifts. As we continue our study, help us to begin to grasp the meaning of that gift for our world and our lives. 11
January 3 Jesus and the Other Beginning All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life. John 1:3, 4, ESV. The first beginning in John s Gospel is one without a beginning, reflecting on the eternal preexistence of the divine Christ. But John portrays a second beginning in verses 3 and 4 the beginning of Creation. Paul comments upon that one when he writes in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,... all things were created through him and for him (Col. 1:16, RSV). And the book of Hebrews states that it was through Christ that God created the world (Heb. 1:2, RSV). Thus it is that the Babe of Bethlehem was much more than just one more person in the tired history of this world. The Bible sets Him forth as the Creator God, who has life in Himself in the same way that the Father has life in himself (John 5:26, RSV). The Desire of Ages captures that truth when it claims that in Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived (p. 530). It is that life in Himself that positioned the Word to act in Creation. And it is no accident that John describes the creative Christ as the Word. After all, it is the act of speaking that ushers in each day of Creation Week. And God said reflects on the meaning of the creative Word in John 1:1-5 (see Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24). As a result, it was also that eternal Word who kept the Sabbath at the end of Creation week. Thus, we read, the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation (Gen. 2:1-3, RSV). With that in mind, there is little wonder that Jesus noted that the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath (Mark 2:28). John s Gospel doesn t fool around when it comes to introducing Jesus. He is not merely that child born in Bethlehem. No! He is eternal God. He is the Creator of all that is. He has life in Himself. As we turn our eyes upon this Jesus our minds are challenged and astounded regarding the true identity of our Savior. 12
January 4 Jesus the Eternal I AM Jesus said to [the Jews], Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. So they took up stones to throw at him. John 8:58, 59, RSV. What a strange passage, I thought to myself when first reading John s Gospel. Why did the Jewish leaders want to stone Jesus to death because He had claimed to be I am? And what is the significance of that claim? Those questions take us back to Exodus 3:13, in which Moses wanted to know God s name in case his fellow Hebrews in Egypt asked him to identify the Deity that he claimed had sent him to them. In reply, God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM ; and He said, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I AM has sent me to you. God, furthermore, said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, The Lord [Yahweh in Hebrew], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever (verses 14, 15, NASB). With those verses in mind it is easy to see why the Jews sought to kill Jesus when He identified Himself as the I AM. He was identifying Himself as no less than the God of the covenant with the Jewish people. He was pronouncing Himself to be Yahweh ( Jehovah in the King James Version), the eternal I AM, the God of the Old Testament. The word Yahweh means to be, reflecting the constant being or existence of God not only for eternity in the past and future but also the present God who leads His people and supplies their needs throughout Jewish history. Thus it was the I AM who met with Moses on Sinai, saying, I am the Lord [Yahweh] your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage (Ex. 20:2, RSV). That act of divine grace called for a response in verses 3-17 the Ten Commandments. Thus even in the Old Testament, law keeping is a response to God s redemptive grace through Christ. How important it is to realize that the Babe of Bethlehem was not just another child. He was and is the I AM, the God who gave the law, the God who led His people in past ages of earthly history. But more than that, the eternal I AM is still guiding His people today and will do so throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity in the future. We serve a magnificent Lord who not only had power to create but has the ability to save each of us to the uttermost (Heb. 7:25). 13