SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/3/2016
9:01 AM
My Worship Time
Focus:
Jesus is Equal to God in His Person
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 5:17-18
Message of
the verses: “17 But He answered them, "My Father is
working until now, and I Myself am working." 18 For this reason therefore
the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was
breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself
equal with God.”
I have decided not to add another introduction to
this section from John, a section that in total goes from verses 17-47 or John
chapter five, but for our purposes as we follow the outline of John MacArthur
we only will look at verses 17-24, and then move on to look at only five verses
in the next section of his outline.
However I would like to say that this is probably one of the most, if
not the most important subjects that we will be looking at for in this section
we will see who Jesus Christ claims to be, and who He truly is. I believe that as we study the life of Jesus
Christ in the gospels, and this is the second gospel that I have studied,
looking at the gospel of Mark about three years ago, as we study these accounts
of Jesus Christ we only have three possible things that we say that Jesus
is. We can say that Jesus’ claims to be
the Son of God, God incarnate are nothing but a lie from His lips. We can say that Jesus Christ was actually “off
His rocker” so to speak that He had some issues that caused Him to believe that
He was the Son of God, but was actually “crazy.” Lastly we can look at the evidence that is
found in the Scriptures and believe that Jesus is the Son of God as John states
in the verses that we have looked at ever since we began this study in the
gospel of John: “30 Therefore many other
signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not
written in this book; 31 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.” Now to think that Jesus was a good man, a
good spiritual leader or anything similar is out of the question for that is
not what He claimed to be and we also have to remember that the reasons that
the religious leaders of the Jews had Him crucified is because of this claim to
be God’s Son something we will look further at in this SD.
Before we do that I want to better set the stage of
what we will be looking at in the next few Spiritual Diaries as I quote the
last paragraph of John MacArthur’s introductory comments from his commentary on
John: “This section affirming our Lord’s
deity flows directly from the confrontation that arose when Jesus healed a
crippled man on the Sabbath (vv. 1-16).
The Lord did not violate the Old Testament Sabbath regulations, but
rather the rabbinic additions of those regulations. Yet He did not defend Himself by pointing out
the distinction between God’s Law and man’s extraneous tradition. Instead, He responded in a far more radical
way—He maintained that He was equal with God and thus had the right to do
whatever He wanted on the Sabbath. The
result is one of the most profound Christological discourses in all of
Scripture. In verses 17-24 Jesus makes
five unmistakable claims to full equality with God: He is equal with the Father in person, in His
works, in His sovereign power, in His judgment, and in the honor due Him.” In this last point what is being said is that
Jesus Christ is worthy to be worshiped.
Now we will begin to look at these verses.
The first thing we will do is look at a couple of
verses, one in review and one from the book of Mark to help us out as we look
at these verses. We must remember that
what went on during the Sabbath was at the heart of Jewish worship during the
time when Jesus was on the earth, and as we noted this was a false worship
system because it was a works related system as all false worship systems
are. MacArthur writes “The Lord’s reply
to those who challenged Him for violating it (v:16), ‘My Father is work until
not, and I Myself am working’ implies that the Sabbath was not instituted for
God’s benefit but for man’s (Mark 2:27).”
“16 For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing
these things on the Sabbath (John 5:16).”
“Jesus said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for
the Sabbath. "So the Son of Man is
Lord even of the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:27-28).”
What we are seeing here is that the Sabbath restriction on working did
not apply to God, however we have to also remember that Jesus perfectly kept
all of the Law of God which also shows us that whatever He did while on earth
was not outside of those Laws that God gave to Israel back in the early books
of the Old Testament (Exodus-Deuteronomy).
Now I want to also include this important quote from MacArthur that
relates to God not being required to rest on the Sabbath Day: “He was not required to rest on every seventh
day. It is true that at the end of
creation week, He ‘rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had
done’ (Gen. 2:2). That, however, was not
because He was tired or received some benefit, for ‘the Everlasting God, the
Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired’
(Isa. 40:28). Instead, it was to set a
divine example for man to rest one day out of each week (Ex. 20:9-11).
“The significance of the seventh day is underscored
by the three references to it in Genesis 2:1-3.
According to verse3, God ‘sanctified’ (‘set apart’; separated’) that day
to distinguish it from the first six, none of which are so designated. Three verbs in the passage, each of them
associated with the work of God, reveal why He uniquely set apart the seventh
day.
“Complete’ (v. 1) stresses that the entire work of
God in creation was finished by the end of the sixth day. In contrast to the theory of evolution
(whether atheistic or theistic), the Bible denies that the creative process is
still going on.
“Since His work of creation was completed, God ‘rested’
(vv. 2-3). As noted above, that does not
imply any weariness on His part (Isa. 40:28); the verb merely indicates that by
the seventh day God had ceased to do the work of creation (cf. Ex. 20:11).
“Finally God ‘blessed’ the seventh day (v. 3); that
is, He set it aside as a memorial. Every
Saturday of every week serves as a reminder that God created the entire
universe in six days, and then rested from His creative activity.”
I want to now look at Hebrews 1:3 “And He is the
radiance of His glory and the
exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When
He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty
on high.” This verse tells us that Jesus
is truly God, and it also tells us of the work that He does in sustaining the
universe, I go back to what Dr. Wiersbe said about verse seventeen that God is
always working to cause things to grow, and this is not creative work, but work
in sustaining things on earth so that His creation can continue to eat and
drink. What we have to get out of this
statement that Jesus said: “My Father is
working until now, and I Myself am working,” is that He claims to be God for He
says that He is the same essence of His Father, and believe me the Jews knew
exactly what He was saying. Not only
this but as MacArthur writes “He words also served as a subtle rebuke to the
Jewish legalistic system, under which He has been indicted for doing good and
showing mercy on the Sabbath. After all, God Himself does good and shows mercy
on the Sabbath. Jesus, therefore,
maintained that it is right to do good on the Sabbath, since God does. Ironically, even the unbelieving Jews
performed acts of mercy on the Sabbath (cf. 7:23; Luke 14:5)—the very thing for
which they hypocritically rebuked Jesus.”
“"If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the Law of
Moses will not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made an entire man
well on the Sabbath? (John 7:23). “And
He said to them, "Which one of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well,
and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?’ (Luke 14:5).
Now as we look at verse eighteen we see what
MacArthur calls a continuous action in the tense of the verb “all the more to
kill Him.” This is saying that they
continued in their desire to kill Him and would eventually complete their task,
not knowing that this was God’s plan all along, however they were still responsible
for their actions. The Jews were not
totally upset with what they thought was wrong in what Christ was doing on the
Sabbath, but now even more because of His claim to be God, equal in nature with
God the Father. Now as we move along in
John’s gospel we will see this hatred intensified and as stated will eventually
kill the Son of God by crucifixion.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: One of the things that I was reminded of
today is that when Saturday comes around each week that it is a reminder that
Jesus created the universe in six 24 hour days and then rested for His work was
complete.
My Steps of Faith
for Today:
To get the truth out that Jesus Christ is God who came in the flesh, for
He told Philip “"Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come
to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say,
’Show us the Father’?”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “At Gibeon” (1 Kings 3:5).
Today’s Bible question: “What king of Persia permitted the Jews to
return to Jerusalem?”
Answer in our next SD. 3/3/2016 10:14 AM
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