SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/4/2015
3:04 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 The Light
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 1:6-13
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. 9 There was the true Light which, coming into
the world, enlightens every man. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made
through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and those
who were His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them
He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His
name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor
of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
In today’s Spiritual Diary I want to pick up on what
Warren Wiersbe has to say on these verses as we just look at verses 4-5 from
his commentary in an earlier SD so we will pick up by looking at verses 6-13.
We continue to talk about light and darkness because John
continues to write about it in these verses.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “Satan strives to keep people in the darkness,
because darkness means death and hell, while light means life and heaven.
“This fact helps explain ministry of John the Baptist
(John 1:6-8). John was sent as a witness
to Jesus Christ, to tell people that the Light had come into the world.” A casual reading of these verses my cause one
to wonder why it is that John brings up John the Baptist as this point of his
writing, but John does in fact have a reason in doing this as we will see
later.
It was John the Baptist’s job or ministry to be a witness
to Jesus Christ, to introduce Him to those in Israel, to baptize Him and to be
the forerunner coming before Jesus. The
other three gospels give us more information about John the Baptist than John
does, as they tell about the promise of his birth to parents who never had any
children and were probably in their 80’s, they tell more of his ministry, and
also tell about his death, while John does not tell of these things. John came to be a witness about Jesus to the
Jews, but they did not want to hear about Jesus. We wonder why it was the that the nation of
Israel rejected Jesus when they had so much knowledge about His coming, and yet
they were actually blinded to the fact that Jesus was their long awaited
Messiah. Dr. Wiersbe writes “They were
spiritually ignorant. Jesus is the ‘true
Light’—the original of which every other light is a copy—but the Jews were
content with the copies. They had Moses
and the Law, the temple and the sacrifices; but they did not comprehend that
these ‘lights’ pointed to the true Light who was the fulfillment, the
completion, of the Old Testament religion.”
Dr. Wiersbe writes more about what we will find in John’s
Gospel: “As you study John’s Gospel, you
will find Jesus teaching the people that He is the fulfillment of all that was
typified in the Law. It was not enough to
be born a Jew, they had to be born again, born from above (John 3). He deliberately performed two miracles on the
Sabbath to teach tem that He had a new rest to give them (John 5; 9). He was the satisfying manna (John 6) and the
life-giving water (John 7:37-39). He is
the Shepherd of a new flock (John 10:16), and He is a new Vine (John 15). But the people were so shackled by religious
tradition that they could not understand spiritual truth. Jesus came to His own world that He had
created, but His own people, Israel, could not understand Him and would not
receive Him.
“They saw His works and heard His words. They observed His perfect life. He gave them every opportunity to grasp the
truth, believe, and be saved. Jesus is
the way, but they would not walk with Him (John 6:66-71). He is the truth, but they would not believe
Him (John 12:37ff.). He is the life, and
they crucified Him!” To me Dr. Warren Wiersbe has a beautiful way of writing
things that cause me to better understand the great truths of Scripture, and
these two paragraphs are two of his finest.
I was speaking to a man last night at our bowling league
who is a Jew, but does not believe in anything religious. I felt very bad for him but at least my
friend and I began to talk a little bit to him about our faith. He was telling us about when he was small and
how one day he was told by some Catholic boys that it was his race that killed
Jesus, a word he had never heard before.
I can say that there were a lot of things that happened to me once I
became a believer and one of the things that were completely changed in my life
is that God has given me a great love for the children of Israel, to the
Jews. We see that Jesus came to His own
physical people, the children of Israel and in particular the Jews and yet they
did not want anything to do with Him as we have learned from Dr. Wiersbe’s comments. However, what about people today, what about
a person who may be reading this SD and has never heard of Jesus or never
understood who He is and what He has done for you? Take the time to understand from this study
of John’s gospel that Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life, and that
John wrote this gospel for you to understand who Jesus is: “30 Therefore many other signs Jesus also
performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;
31 but these have been written so that
you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing
you may have life in His name (John 20:31).”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I learned some things from the teaching of Dr. Wiersbe,
thing I knew before, but things that as he put them together it made better
sense to me.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Be ready to share the Light with those whom
God brings into my path today and every day.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “The stars.”
Today’s Bible
question: “In what part of the person
does God shine light?”
Answer in our next SD.
12/4/2015 4:02 PM
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