SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/5/2015
10:53 AM
My Worship Time Focus: John the Baptist: Believable Testimony
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 1:6-8
Message of the
verses: “6 There came a man sent
from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to testify about the
Light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the Light, but he
came to testify about the Light.”
Before we look at these verses I want to mention
something that I believe is important to our whole study of the Gospel of John
and that is that in the prologue, the first eighteen verses we see a small
picture of what John will be writing about in the entire book, a snapshot if
you will.
I listened a couple of times to a sermon that John
MacArthur did on these series of verses, actually from verse 6-13, and there
were some interesting things in the sermon that I want to pass along before we
look at these verses for today so I will quote some of the things from his sermon
at this point. He is talking about light
in the quotes I am about to quote here.
“To give you a
scientific definition of light might help expand your understanding a little
bit, and then we can apply it to what we’re learning here about the Lord Jesus
Christ. Light, in fact, is energy. Science defines light as luminous energy, as
radiant energy, as electromagnetic energy, and light is moving at a speed of
186,282 miles per second. It is anything but static. It is anything but fixed.
It is considered as a wave, as a corpuscular or quantum phenomenon. It is, in
great measure, indescribable as to the power and the source of that power. And
the quantum idea is a testimony to the idea that it cannot be comprehended as
to the source from which it draws its velocity, and it’s very existence. Light
is a wave, moving at 186,000 miles per second. This wave can hit the retina of
the eye and when it does that, it makes things visible. It illuminates things,
all colors depend on light. Where there is light, we see. Where there is no
light, we do not see. It is high-speed energy that hits the eye and makes
things visible.
“When you think about
light in that way, you are seeing it, or viewing it in a way that is directly applicable
to the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is divine power in the spiritual
realm, making things visible. When the Light, the spiritual light of Christ, hits the living soul,
which would be equal to the open and functioning eye, everything is illuminated
in the spiritual realm. The Light, according to John, is none other than the life--that eternal
life who is the Lord Jesus Christ--who is the Word that comes from God. He is the Word because in Him
God speaks. He is the Life because through Him God gives life. He is the Light
because by Him everything in the spiritual realm is illuminated. Apart from
Him, there is no word from God. Apart from Him there is no life. And apart from
Him, there is no true understanding--all is darkness.
“John has captured
some very basic things--simple on the surface and yet profound to express who this
person is that we call the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the living wave of divine
power, moving at infinite speed, shining brightly into the spiritual realm to
illuminate all that is otherwise dark. The Word is the Life, who is the Light
that overpowers the darkness. The darkness, verse 5 says, cannot overpower the
Light.
“Our Lord Jesus Christ
makes everything spiritual truly discernible and visible. You see the way the spiritual
realm truly is, only in the light of Christ. Apart from Him, everything is
dark. Even in the world of religion, the realm of religion, everything is dark
without Christ.”
Now he moves on to
talk a bit about the verses we are looking at in our study today and so I want
to quote some of that as well.
“So John introduces us
to the one who illuminates the spiritual realm. And while in reading that you might
think, starting from verse 6 down, that it’s a bit eclectic. It talks a little
bit about John, and then it talks about the world, and then about Him coming to
His own, and about people who believe, and so forth. You might see this as a
bit eclectic or maybe he’s just kind of pulling a few things together that are
unrelated, but that is not the case. We want to give John more credit than
that.
“What he’s doing here
is identifying the Light. And he refers to it six times, and he will refer to
Christ as the Light again as we will see in subsequent sections, even this
morning, of the gospel of John. But what John is going to do in this opening chapter is to turn that
Light on some very essential, foundational, bottom-line, bedrock, spiritual
truths. He’s going to shine the Light where the Light initially needs to
be placed in order for us to understand the foundational realities. The light of Christ will shine
and reveal in this section the nature of true ministry. The Light will shine and reveal
the very nature of the Savior Himself. The Light will shine and reveal the nature of sinners.
It will shine and reveal
the nature of believers, and it will even illuminate the nature of God--all of that in this
section. We will
see the truth about Christian ministry, the truth about Christ Himself, the
truth about sinners, the truth about believers, and the truth about God when the
Light shines--and the Light is none other than Christ. The arrival of the
divine Light drives the darkness away from these foundational realities.” Now the verses he is writing about here are
verses 6-13, which are the verses in second chapter of his commentary that he
goes over which he entitled “Responding to the Incarnate Word.”
One more quote and we
will have a little bit to say about our verses and then will probably do a bit
more tomorrow. “Now remember, John has a
gospel objective here. He says at the end of his letter that he has written all
these things that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and believing have life in His name. So this is a saving effort; this is a gospel effort; this is an
evangelistic book. He
wants us to be saved, and He knows that can only come when we understand the
gospel. And these
are the foundations of the gospel that John shines the light on at the very,
very beginning.”
Now as we look at this
abrupt change in John’s writing going from speaking about the exalted Lord
Jesus Christ to now talking about a mere “man sent from God” it is striking to
say the least, but once we have looked at the quotes from MacArthur’s sermon we
now have a better idea of why John does.
We see the words “There came” at the beginning of verse six and
MacArthur explains that it should be written “there appeared,” “indicating the
shift from the heavenly Word to His earthly herald. After describing the Word who was God, John
turned to the one who announced that the Word was God.” We know who that is as John mentions his name
as John, but it is John the Baptist. Now
the author of this gospel is John the Apostle and his name is not mentioned in
this book, only seen as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” to identify John, and
any other time we see John mentioned it refers to John the Baptist, other than
the four times it refers to the father of Peter (1:42; 21:15, 16, 17).
I want to look at one
more thing and then continue this in our next SD and that is the phrase “sent
from God” which refers to John the Baptist.
He is the herald in a number of ways and the first is he had a divine
commission for he was spoken of in the Old Testament “A voice is calling,
"Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a
highway for our God (Isaiah 40:3) and this is confirmed in both Matthew 3:3
along with Mark 1:2-3). Let us look at
the end of the book of Malachi who wrote “"Behold, I am going to send My
messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek,
will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom
you delight, behold, He is coming," says the LORD of hosts (Mal. 3:1)” “5
"Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the
coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. 6 “He will restore the hearts
of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their
fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse’ (Mal. 4:5-6).”
There was even some confusion with the disciples of Jesus on who John the
Baptist was and Jesus explained that if He would have been accepted then John
the Baptist would have been the fulfillment of Elijah. John the Baptist came before the first coming
of Christ to tell other about Him, to fulfill the words of Isaiah, and I
believe that Elijah will be one of the two witnesses that are spoken of in
Revelation chapter eleven and I also believe that the other will be Moses. One represents the Law and the other the
Prophets as seen on the mountain of transfiguration.
Another reason we can
see he was sent from God was something we have already gone over and that is
what happened surrounding his miraculous birth seen in the first chapter of
Luke. And a part of that is the third
reason which an angel coming to see Zacharias, John’s father to announce his son’s
birth. Fourthly we see that the Holy Spirit filled Zacharias to prophecy about
his son (Luke 1:8-17). Fifth we see that
John the Baptist was sent from the Lord at the divinely appointed time to begin
the public ministry as seen in (Luke 1:80).
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I am happy to learn more about the “Light”
from the sermon that I have listened to and have quoted in this SD.
My Steps of Faith for
Today:
Trust the Lord to help me do something that I need to do today that is
important to me.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:
“The heart” (2 Cor. 4:6).
Today’s Bible question: “Who
declared ‘of the truth You are the Son of God?”
Answer in our next SD.
12/5/2015 11:58 AM
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