SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/31/2016 9:44 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 The Assertion
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 8:12
Message of the verses: “12 Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying,
"I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the
darkness, but will have the Light of life."”
In our last
SD we talked about the fulfillment of prophecies that spoke of God being light,
and that His Messiah would be light and how Jesus took the perfect opportunity
to show those watching and listening to Him how He fulfills these
prophecies. Now in today’s SD we want to
look at the last part of verse twelve “he who follows Me will not walk in
darkness, but will have the Light of life.”
Jesus’
statement of those who follow Him will not walk in darkness shows us that His
light is eternal, unlike the glowing candelabras that were a part of this Jewish
feast of Tabernacles. Think of in the
history of the Exodus how God was a light to them as they wondered throughout
the wilderness in a pillar of fire. Let
us look at Exodus 40:36-38 “36
Throughout all their journeys whenever the cloud was taken up from over
the tabernacle, the sons of Israel would set out; 37 but if the cloud was not taken up, then they
did not set out until the day when it was taken up. 38 For throughout all their
journeys, the cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire in it by
night, in the sight of all the house of Israel.” Incidentally these are the last three verses in
the book of Exodus.
Now as we
see the Lord asking people to follow Him, we know that this is not the first
time that this offer has been made and we will look at a few times this offer
was made in John’s gospel. 1:43 “The
next day He purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to
him, "Follow Me."” 10:4 “"When
he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him
because they know his voice.” 10:27 “"My
sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;” 12:26 “"If anyone serves Me, he must
follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me,
the Father will honor him.” 21:19 “Now
this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when
He had spoken this, He *said to him, "Follow Me!"” 21:22 “Jesus *said to him, "If I want
him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!"”
Jesus
promises that the one who follows Him will not walk in the darkness of sin, the
world, and Satan, however will have the Light, and this Light produces
spiritual life. Believers, by following
Jesus will reflect His Light so those in the world can see it as He said in
Matthew 5:14 “"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot
be hidden;” I have always remember my favorite President, President Reagan
stated that United States was to be that bright and shinning light. I suppose that if you look at our solar
system we are in that Jesus would represent the Sun, as the planets orbit
around the sun, and we as believers would represent the moon which gives
reflected light to the earth at night, the light is not its own, but reflected
from the sun. Leon Morris writes “They,
having kindled their torches at His bright flame, show to the world something
of His light.”
John
MacArthur writes “Akoloutheo
(follows) is sometimes used in a general sense to speak of the crows who
followed Jesus. But it can also refer,
more specifically, to following Him as a true disciple (eg. 1:43; 10:4, 27;
12:26; Matt. 4:20, 22; 9:9; 10:38; 16:24; 19:27; Mark 9:38). In that context, it has the connotation of
complete submission to Jesus as Lord.
God does not accept a halfhearted following of Christ—of receiving Him
as Savior, but not following Him as Lord.
The person who comes to Jesus comes to Him on His terms, or he does not
come at all—a truth Jesus illustrated in Matthew 8:18-22 ‘18 Now when Jesus saw
a crowd around Him, He gave orders to depart to the other side of the sea. 19
Then a scribe came and said to Him, "Teacher, I will follow You wherever
You go." 20 Jesus said to him, "The foxes have holes and the birds of
the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." 21
Another of the disciples said to Him, "Lord, permit me first to go and
bury my father." 22 But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me, and allow the
dead to bury their own dead."’
“An even
more striking illustration of that principle is found in Jesus’ dialogue with
the rich young ruler: ‘18 A ruler questioned Him, saying, "Good Teacher,
what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 19 And Jesus said to him,
"Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. 20 "You know the commandments, ’DO NOT
COMMIT ADULTERY, DO NOT MURDER, DO NOT STEAL, DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS, HONOR
YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.’" 21 And he said, "All these things I have
kept from my youth." 22 When Jesus
heard this, He said to him, "One thing you still lack; sell all that you
possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven;
and come, follow Me." 23 But when he had heard these things, he became
very sad, for he was extremely rich. 24 And Jesus looked at him and said,
"How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God! 25
“For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to enter the kingdom of God." 26 They who heard it said, "Then
who can be saved?" 27 But He said, "The things that are impossible
with people are possible with God’ (Luke 18:18-27).”
I want to
give a couple of quotes from the MacArthur Study Bible on these two sections of
Scripture. When I listened to his sermon
from 1970 he had made some comments that I wanted to quote, but when I looked
on his website I could not look at this sermon for some reason. He writes the following from his study
Bible: “8:21 permit me first to go and bury my father. This does not mean that the man’s father was
already dead. The phrase ‘I must bury my
father’ was a common figure of speech meaning, ‘Let me wait until I receive my
inheritance.’
Now as far
as the rich young ruler Jesus knows all things as mentioned in the second
chapter of John and He knew that this man did not or could not keep all of the
commandments but Jesus did not argue with Him about this, but He got to the
root of the problem which was that his riches were his god and did not want to
stop worshiping his wealth,
Spiritual meaning for my life today: To follow the Lord and allow His Light to
show me when I am moving into the darkness of the world.
My Steps of Faith for
Today: Do a better job at my
memorizing my verses so that I can begin to meditate on them.
Memory verses for the week:
2 Corinthians 12:7-9a 7. Because of the surpassing greatness of the
revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given
me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me-to keep me from
exalting myself. 8. Concerning this I
implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. 9. And
He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in
weakness,’
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Samuel” (1 Samuel 3:10).
Today’s Bible question:
“In what city did Paul fight with beasts?”
Answer in our next SD.
5/31/2016 10:52 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment