SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/11/2016
12:17 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 The Christ
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 4:20-26
Message of
the verses: “20 “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain,
and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to
worship." 21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming
when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22
“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is
from the Jews. 23 "But an hour is
coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 “God is
spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." 25
The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called
Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us." 26 Jesus said
to her, "I who speak to you am He.’”
Now we mentioned at the end of our last SD on this
that the word “spirit” is referring to the human spirit and not the Holy
Spirit. I have mentioned that some of
the messages that I have been listening to from John MacArthur were done in the
early 1970’s and then he later began to go through the book of John again
around 2012. In 1982 he preached a
number of messages also from this section of John on worship and I have begun
to listen to them also. In his first
message on worship from this section he mentioned something that I did not
realize was true and it has to do with what we are talking about as far as the
spirit refers to the human spirit and not the Holy Spirit and we will have to
look at Romans 12:1-2 to better understand this: “1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living
and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And
do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and
acceptable and perfect.” Really we only
need look at verse one here, and I want to look at the highlighted portions of
it. “To present you bodies a living and
holy sacrifice” is what I first want to look at. In the past I had always thought that this
was just speaking of our human bodies, and it pictured an offering given by a
Jewish person in the Old Testament times.
In the message from today MacArthur mentioned that Paul was speaking of
our entire body, which is body, soul, and spirit and it kind of hit me that
this surely is true and that this makes more sense than the way that I was
looking at it before. Now why do we do
this act of presenting our bodies to the Lord?
First of all Paul wrote eleven chapters explaining how God has saved us
and then he begins chapter twelve with the word “therefore” which means that in
light of all that the Lord has done for us in giving us salvation that He now
wants us to give ourselves to Him for worship.
This leads us into the last highlighted portion of verse one which shows
us why we give ourselves to the Lord “which is you spiritual service of
worship.”
Now back to John:
Now by showing us that we worship with our human spirit Jesus is saying
to the woman in the future worship will not be external conformity to
ceremonies and rituals. Worship has to
come from the heart. Not only does say
that our worship comes from our spirit, but it must be done in truth. MacArthur writes “Truth calls for this heart
worship to be consistent with what Scripture teaches and centered on the
incarnate Word. The worship of neither
the Samaritans nor the Jews could be characterized as being in ‘spirit and
truth, even though the Jews had a more complete understand of truth. Both groups focused on external factors. They conformed outwardly to regulations,
observed rituals, and offered sacrifices.
But the time had arrived, since the Messiah had come, when true
worshipers would no longer be identified by where they worshiped. True
worshipers are those who ‘worship the Father in spirit and truth.” “It is ‘such people the Father seeks to be
His worshipers’ by sovereignty drawing them to Himself (6:44, 65).”
Jesus says that “God is spirit” and we can draw from
that that no one has actually seen God the Father with the exception of Jesus
Christ His Son. In the first of the Ten
Commandments we read from Exodus “20: 3
"You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 "You shall not make for yourself an
idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in
the water under the earth. 5 "You
shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the
fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6
but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep
My commandments.” Now let us go back to
when God brought Israel out of Egypt and then He brought them to Mt. Sinai in
order to give them His Law. Moses is up
on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments and the people thought that he
was dead so they persuaded Aaron to make a calf. Now this calf was an idol, but another reason
they wanted it made was so that they could picture the God who brought them out
of Egypt. God says that we are never to
do that, God is spirit and so when we think about who God is we do not picture
any form He is in so we are not tempted to worship that from like the children
of Israel did.
Now it is because God is spirit we must worship Him
in spirit and in truth. I want to look
back at this time to Jeremiah 31:31-35 “31
"Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I
will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
32 not like the covenant which I made
with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the
land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to
them," declares the LORD. 33
"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of
Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law
within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and
they shall be My people. 34 "They
will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying,
’Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the
greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their
iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Now I realize that this speaks of the New
Covenant and I believe that Jeremiah is actually talking about what will happen
in the Millennial Kingdom, but the writer to the Hebrews picks up on this in
Hebrews 8 and 10 so that this refers to all NT believers and shows us this new
way of worship that Jesus is speaking about to this woman at the well.
The woman still did not understand what Jesus was
talking about and so she says that the believed that one day the Messiah would
come and explain everything to which we see the remarkable words of Jesus who
says to her “"I who speak to you am He.’”
These are remarkable words that Jesus spoke to her for Jesus made it a
point not to say this to the Jewish people “Then He warned the disciples that
they should tell no one that He was the Christ (Matthew 16:20.” He said these words after Peter said to Jesus
that He was the Christ, and Jesus does not want the Jews to know this. The 13th chapter of Matthew is a
turning point in the book as Jesus begins to speak in parables because in the
12th chapter the Jews claimed that He was doing miracles in the
power of Beelzebub, or in Satan’s power, so it is no wonder that Jesus chose to
tell this woman at the well who would become a true believer, a woman who was married
five times and now living with a man not being married to him, Jesus tells her
who He is. The woman accepts this truth
and as we will see leaves her water pot and runs into town to tell others.
MacArthur
concludes: “Jesus’ conversation with the
woman at the well illustrates three nonnegotiable truths about salvation. First, salvation comes only to those who
recognize their desperate need for spiritual life they do not have. Living water will be received only by those
who realize that they are spiritually thirsty.
Second, salvation comes only to those who confess and repent of their
sin and desire forgiveness. Before this
promiscuous woman could embrace the Savior, she had to acknowledge the full
weight of her iniquity. And, third,
salvation comes only to those who embrace Jesus Christ as their Messiah and sin
bearer. After all, salvation is found in
no one else (cf. 14:6; Acts 4:12).”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: I am thankful that the Lord spoke to my heart
in the same way that He spoke to this woman’s heart, for as I have mentioned
there are similar things in my life that were in hers.
My Steps of Faith
for Today: Trust the Lord to use me to tell others about this wonderful story of salvation
like Jesus told the woman at the well.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Andrew” (John 6:8-9).
Today’s Bible question: “Which book records a man eating locusts for
food?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/11/2016 1:15 PM
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