SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/8/2016
3:36 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 Jesus’ Passion for Reverence
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 2:12-17
Message of
the verses: “12 After this He went down to Capernaum, He and His
mother and His brothers and His disciples; and they stayed there a few days. 13
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And He
found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the
money changers seated at their tables. 15
And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple,
with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers
and overturned their tables; 16 and to
those who were selling the doves He said, "Take these things away; stop
making My Father’s house a place of business." 17 His disciples remembered
that it was written, "ZEAL FOR YOUR HOUSE WILL CONSUME ME.’”
Here is how we are going to do this first SD on the
subject named above, as I want to use several quotes from both a sermon from
John MacArthur, an early sermon and then I want to quote some things from
Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on the gospel of John. Then in our next SD, even though some of the
things may be repeated, we will look at some of the things from John MacArthur’s
commentary as we follow his outline for the next SD. I listened to this sermon that I want to
quote from a few days ago and found some interesting things in it that I want
to pass along in this particular SD.
I know that I will kind of be jumping in the
middle of this section when I post this quote, but it is worth reading. Whenever I read this story before and got to
verse seventeen I knew that the quote was from the book of Psalms, actually
Psalm 69 but I did not realize that this was also a fulfillment of Malachi
chapter three which is what this quote will explain. “Now they didn't know it, they didn't know
anything for that matter, they never did, but basically they were seeing right
in front of their faces the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy. And I'll show
you that prophecy. Look at Malachi 3:1, one of the most important prophecies in
relation to who Christ is. Malachi 3:1, now this has a future fulfillment in
the Second Coming of Christ, but it has an indicated initial fulfillment in
this action of Christ. "Behold, I will send My messenger and he shall prepare
the way before Me," that's John the Baptist. Watch this. "And the
Lord whom you seek, that is Messiah, shall suddenly come to His temple,"
and it says later on in a few verses that He shall refine and purify that
place. Now you can go back to John chapter 2.
“They didn't know it but what they were seeing was
the prophecy of the Messiah coming suddenly to His temple fulfilled by Jesus
Christ. The first place Jesus Christ went, He walked right into that temple as
Malachi said He would and He took a whip in His hand and He began to beat
people and animals and chase them out. He was purifying His Father's house. So
you see, John by putting the incident of the cleansing of the temple here is
saying from another angle Jesus is Messiah, isn't he? From the prophetic angle.
Jesus came to the temple in direct fulfillment of Malachi's prophecy. The
cleansing of the temple, the refining of the temple was a fulfillment of God's
promise.”
Now we will get an overview of this passage from
looking at Warren Wiersbe’s commentary, and then as mentioned we will look into
John MacArthur’s commentary in our next SD.
Now as we look through the gospels at the life of
Jesus Christ we see that He did not follow the man made laws that the Pharisees
had made up, actually some six hundred of them.
Ok here is one of those laws that they followed. A woman was not allowed to look into a
looking glass on the Sabbath because if she would see a grey hair she may want
to pull it out and that would be working.
Another one of these “silly laws of the Pharisees:” If you eat an egg that was laid on the
Sabbath you would have to kill the chicken the next day, for it was not good to
eat an egg by a chicken who laid an egg on the Sabbath thus you had to kill
it. I think you get the point, but all
of the real laws that were found in the Word of God Jesus did follow, like
going to the temple three times a year during certain feasts including
Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles which is found in Deuteronomy 16:16. So we see Jesus at the celebration of
Passover as He begins His ministry and He sees that there were money changers
and sellers of sheep and goats right there in the court of the Gentiles, the
place where the Jewish people were to tell the Gentiles about the Lord. He is angry about this and this is not a side
of our Lord that we see a lot in the gospels, but wrath is one of His
attributes and so he cleans out the temple and at the end of His ministry,
three years later He will do this again.
Now we do need to mention that when this idea first began it was good,
for during this time of Passover there were perhaps at least one million people
there from all around the known world and it would have been impossible for all
of them to bring their sacrifices into Jerusalem and so they would bring money
and buy one, but the money changers would exchange their money at a cost and of
course the sellers of the sacrifice animals would no doubt cheat them and this
is one of the reasons that it angered Christ.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today:
Worshiping the Lord in the correct manner is most important to me.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Worship the Lord in spirit and truth.
Answer to yesterdays Bible question: “Abraham” (Genesis 17:5).
Today’s Bible question: “What did Moses’ rod become when he cast it to the ground at the burning bush?”
Answer in our next SD.
1/8/2016 4:18 PM
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