SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/6/2016
8:17 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
The Significance
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 2:11
Message of
the verse: “11 This beginning of His signs Jesus did in
Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.”
We want to look at two results of this miracle by
Jesus as seen through the eyes of John, and for the first one let us take a
peek back at John 1:14 for some help “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt
among us, and we saw His
glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and
truth.” So the first result of this
miracle is that Jesus manifested His glory as seen in verse eleven and spoken
of in John 1:14. MacArthur writes “He
put His deity on display. Jesus’ signs were not simply powerful displays of
compassion, but were designed to reveal who He really was, since they unmistakably
manifested “God at work (cf. 2:23;3:2; 4:54; 6:2, 14, 7:31; 9:16; 20:30; Acts
2:22). Signs, miracles, wonders
nevertheless do not necessarily convince people to believe in the Lord and the
gospel (2:23-25; 12:37; 15:24; Matt. 11:20-24; 13:58; Luke 16:31). There is no record that any of the servants
who witnessed Jesus’ turning the water into wine followed Him (cf. 2:12).” We don’t know for sure but it seems that this
important first miracle that Jesus did, did not cause anyone to believe in
Him. They should have realized that only
God could do something like what just happened and at least got more information
about who Jesus was, but perhaps they already knew about Him for after all
Jesus grew up not far from there and we have to remember what happened when He
went back there the first time after He began His ministry, the people of
Nazareth tried to kill Him.
The next result was that we learn from verse 11 is
that “His disciples believed in Him.”
Now His disciples had been spending some quality time with Jesus, and
some were former disciples of John the Baptist and had seen what John the
Baptist said about Him, and so when they saw this miracle they were convinced
He was the Messiah. I do remember what
He had said to Nathaniel, how He had seen him under the fig tree which also
showed His disciples that He was indeed God come in the flesh, but even Jesus
said that Nathaniel would see greater things than that and this was the first
that he saw.
MacArthur concludes “May others, reading this gospel
of John, would come to believe, as they did.
And that was John’s purpose in writing not only his account of this
miracle, but also his entire gospel: ‘Therefore many other signs Jesus also
performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;
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
20:30-31).”
In our next SD we will be looking at the
introduction to John 2:12-25 and the theme of this section of John’s Gospel is “Jesus
Displays His Deity,” as seen from the title of chapter seven in John MacArthur’s
commentary on the first half of the John.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: It is good to have a better understand of the
definition of what the glory of Jesus Christ is as I learned in this
section. Seeing the miracles of Jesus as
described in John’s Gospel shows people that Jesus is God come in the flesh as
only God could have done what Jesus did as He displayed His glory in doing these
miracles.
My Steps of Faith
for Today:
Continue to look for the glory of God as I read through the Bible step
by step each day.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “The Red Sea” (Exodus 14:9).
Today’s Bible question: “Who were the two sons of Joseph?”
Answer in our next SD.
1/6/2016 8:43 AM
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