SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/19/2016
12:02 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Unbelief Contemplated
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 4:43-45
Message of
the verses: “43 After the two days He went forth from
there into Galilee. 44 For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor
in his own country. 45 So when He came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him,
having seen all the things that He did in Jerusalem at the feast; for they
themselves also went to the feast.”
Before we get started on this section I want to give
kind of an update on something that I learned while listening to a sermon this
morning on worship that part of the sermon came out of John 4:7, something we already
looked at: “Therefore the Samaritan
woman said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink
since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with
Samaritans.)” Now I may have mentioned
what I am about to say already, that is one of the things that happens when you
are growing a bit older, sometimes you forget things, but what the woman was
actually saying to Jesus is that the Jews don’t drink out of the same utensils
that the Samaritans do. I suppose that
this is just another reason why this woman was wondering why it was that Jesus
was talking to her.
Now as we look at this section for today we find
that after Jesus had stayed at the village of Sychar that He and His disciples
moved on to Galilee where He would be for some sixteen months, but we will not
get all of the information in the book of John as is in the other gospels for
we only see two miracles done here in John’s gospel while Jesus was in Galilee. I tried to mention why it was that Jesus went
through Samaria and there was certainly the reason that He had to meet this
woman there and then minister there for two days having many come to know Him
as Savior and Lord, but let us look at Acts 1:8 “but you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in
all Judea and Samaria,
and even to the remotest
part of the earth.’” This is a
statement from our Lord right before He was to be resurrected into heaven and
notice the sequence that is highlighted and we see that Jesus began His
ministry in Jerusalem, next He moves to Judea and then into Samaria, and
eventually the gospel would spread all around the world through those that came
to know Him which all began in Jerusalem.
John MacArthur writes the following: “The proverbial statement ‘a prophet has no
honor in his own country’ (cf. Luke 4:2 4) contrasts Jesus’ acceptance by the
Samaritans with His general rejection by the Jewish people (1:11). It also explains His motive for returning to
His home region of Galilee (as the conjunction gar [for] indicates). At
first glance it seems somewhat perplexing that Jesus went to Galilee because,
as He ‘Himself testified,’ He would receive no honor there. The point, however, is that Jesus was not
taken by surprise when many in His home region rejected Him. He went there knowing that He would be given
a cold reception, especially at Nazareth, where He had been raised (Luke
4:16ff.). But some in Galilee would
believe and, therefore, honor Him.”
Now I have another rather long quote from a sermon
that MacArthur gave on this section a few years ago and I want to focus in a
bit more on verse 44 as I think this will shed some more light on this verse
that it seems when we first look at it that John just kind of threw it into his
narrative. “Now on the way there’s a
very interesting comment made by John in verse 44. He goes into Galilee for
Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. It…why
does John put that in there? It’s a very interesting thing. It just kind of gets
in the middle of verses 43 and 45 and you have to ask why is it there? It could
have said there He went forth into Galilee and when He came to Galilee…so
what’s verse 44 doing in there? “For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has
no honor in His own country.” Did He go in to prove that? Didn’t He have a
purpose of proving a proverb? You know that proverb, “Familiarity breeds
contempt.” Or as some have said, “This is the proof of man’s corruption that he
never values what he’s familiar with.” We would say that, “Ah, a prophet has no
honor in his own country. All experts come from out of town.” Did Jesus go to
Galilee to prove that? Is this prophetic? Is John telling us that He’s not
going to have any more success there then he had in Judea? Jesus’ work in
Galilee would prove that true.
“But even more specifically, see the word
“country” there, His own country? That’s a very interesting word and a very
important word. It is a word with the patri in it which is father in
Greek or Latin, his fatherland, the place his ancestors came from. It’s used
six times in the gospels and it always refers to Nazareth. And you know the
story, what happened to Him when He went to Nazareth? He preached one sermon,
what did they try to do? Stone Him to death, execute Him. So is that explaining
the fact that He’s going in there to prove that point or is John giving us a
prophecy that He will receive no honor in His own town? That’s true…that’s
true.
“And if we expand that word and it could be
expanded in other contexts and say it could refer to the region around, it
would still be true. Now it doesn’t mean that no one was converted in Galilee
because there were some converted. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 15:6 after His
resurrection, when He went to Galilee there were five hundred brethren gathered
there. Five hundred out of the tens and twenties of thousands of people in
Galilee, it’s a meager representation. So we could take the statement as a
positive prophecy. He went there and gave testimony that a prophet has no honor
in His own country, or we could take it in a negative way in which we would
read it this way, that Jesus gave evidence of the fact that He had the power to
overcome that human attitude, that proverbial human attitude. In any case,
maybe the best way to understand it is simply to say it’s prophetic…it’s
prophetic. He was not welcomed into His own town and while there were some who
believed, the vast majority rejected Him. And this was in the face of many
miracles.”
MacArthur concludes “John’s statement, ‘so when He
came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him, does not mean that they believed
savingly in Jesus as the Messiah. Oun (so) refers back to Jesus’ statement
in the preceding verse, and confirms that the Galileans did not honor Him for
who He really was. On the contrary, ‘having
seen all the things that He did in Jerusalem at the feast’ (cf. 2:23), they
welcomed Him merely as a miracle worker.
They were curiosity seekers, eagerly hoping to see Jesus perform some
more sensational feats. Thus the apostle
John writes with a sense of irony; the Galileans’ reception of Jesus was not
genuine, but superficial and shallow.”
Here we have Jesus back near where He was raised
and all the people wanted to see was some kind of miracle, kind of like today
when someone goes to a circus or a sideshow, and as I think about that it
greatly saddens me, for these people had the very God or creation walking in
their midst and for most of then they didn’t even know it, nor for that matter
cared about it.
Answer
to yesterday’s Bible question: “Levi”
(Luke 5:27).
Today’s
Bible question: “Upon how many oxen did
the molten sea in Solomon’s temple stand?”
Answer
in our next SD.
2/19/2016
12:39 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment