SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/9/2016
9:53 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Conviction
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 4:16-19
Message of
the verses: “16 He said to her, "Go, call your
husband and come here." 17 The woman answered and said, "I have no husband."
Jesus said to her, "You have correctly said, ’I have no husband’; 18 for
you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this
you have said truly." 19 The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that
You are a prophet.”
The woman did not understand the spiritual
implications of the “living water” which Jesus spoke to her about, so not He
moves on to expose her sin by saying to her “go, call your husband and come
here,” something that would cause the woman to think about her sinfulness. The things that I am about to quote from John
MacArthur and from the Scriptures are some of the most important things that I
can write, for they have to do with salvation, which is the most important
thing a person can possess. “Those who truly thirst for the righteousness God
provides in salvation will confess and forsake their wicked ways ‘6 Seek the
LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way
And the unrighteous man
his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, And He will have
compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon’ (Isaiah
55:6-7).’ Scripture knows nothing of a salvation without repentance, and that
always involves turning from sin ‘19 “So, King Agrippa, I did not prove
disobedient to the heavenly vision, 20 but kept declaring both to those of
Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of
Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance
(Acts 26:19-20).’ ‘For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception
we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and
true God,’ (1 Thess. 1:9).’ Jesus did not
come to grant sinners perfection in the next life while leaving them to
continue in sin in this one (cf. Jer. 7:9-10; Rom. 3:5-8; 6:1-2). On the contrary, He ‘gave Himself for us to
redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His
own possession, zealous for good deeds’ (Titus 2:14; cf Acts 3:26; Eph.
5:25-27; Col. 1:20-23). As a result,
those who come to Him and truly receive the living water of eternal salvation
have ‘been freed from sin [and become]slaves of righteousness…and enslaved to
God’ (Rom. 6:18, 22; cf. Eph. 6:6; Col. 3:24; 1 Peter 2:16). Jesus responded to the woman’s interest by
offering her the opportunity to confess her sins and receive forgiveness to be
purified and delivered from iniquity to righteousness.”
I guess that one would have to put themselves in the
position that this woman now finds herself in and wonder what would I do if a
perfect stranger would come up to me and tell me some of the sinful things that
I have done, and tell them to me in a loving and concerning way as Jesus was
telling this woman. I suppose with all
of the modern technology that we have today this would be more possible today than
when this woman lived. What we see here
is the deity of Christ as He knows all people and knows all things about all
people. We have to believe that this
woman was shocked at what Jesus says to her as reveals her sinful past so she
answers and says to Jesus “I have no husband.”
Now this is one of those situations where the woman was telling the
truth, for she was not married at that time, but also lying for she had had
five husbands and was not married to the man she was living with at that time
as Jesus tells her “You have correctly said, ’I have no husband’; 18 for you
have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this
you have said truly.’” Here we see
something very important and that is that Jesus was commending for her truthfulness
but Jesus was unmasking her sin and the important thing we see here is that Jesus
rejected the notion that merely living together with someone constituted a
marriage. MacArthur writes “The Bible
views marriage as a formal, legal, public covenant between a man and a woman ‘5
and said, ‘Therefore
a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they
shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined
together, let not man separate.’ (Matthew 19:5-6).”
This woman was surely shaken by what Jesus tells her
and so she then says to Jesus “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.” Now remember the Samaritans knew the OT, for
they believed in the Plenitude, the first five books of the Bible, and so she
knew what a prophet could do, that is tell things that they have received from
God about the future and other things as seen in the OT, and when she calls
Jesus a Prophet, she unknowingly was telling the truth for that is one of the
offices that Jesus had. At this point
she stopped hiding her lifestyle and did not attempt to hide her sin. It is interesting to me that she made no
excuses for his sinful lifestyle, she did not say that she was forced into this
kind of a lifestyle by something perhaps that her parents did to her of give another
excuse, she just said nothing about it which leads me to believe that she
desired to repent of her sinful ways.
She was turning from her sin, hoping to receive the water of eternal
life.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: Repentance and confession: Here is the
definition of the word repentance “a change of mind, as it appears to one who
repents, of a purpose he has formed or of something he has done.” John writes in 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our
sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.” “1) to say
the same thing as another, i.e. to agree with, assent,” this is the meaning of
the word confess, so these words are similar.
It seems to me that when we become a believer we repent our sin and our
sins, sin being our nature, sins being our actions that we have a change of
heart about sinful things, and while we are believers we still have this change
of heart about sin, but we still sin and need to confess it to the Lord as John
writes.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
Live a life pleasing to the Lord.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “God” (1 Kings 3:14).
Today’s Bible
question: “Where was Jehoiada buried?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/9/2016 10:41 AM
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