SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/23/2016 7:22 AM
My Worship Time Focus: His Claim
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 11:20-27
Message of the verses: “20 Martha therefore, when she heard that
Jesus was coming, went to meet Him, but Mary stayed at the house. 21 Martha
then said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have
died. 22 “Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give
You." 23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." 24
Martha said to Him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on
the last day." 25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the
life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 26 and everyone who
lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?" 27 She said
to Him, "Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of
God, even He who comes into the world.’”
I just
looked at a Spiritual Diary that I did in 1994 while studying the book of John,
and one of the things that I noted about Martha was that she did believe that Jesus
had the power to raise her brother from the dead, but that she probably did not
believe that He would do it. I said also
in that SD that I can relate to what I thought she was thinking. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead to the
glory of God.
One of the
first things that we see in this section is that Martha must have been
listening to the Lord Jesus on the perhaps many times that He stayed at their home. The first time that we meet Martha and Mary
is in the book of Luke, and as we look at that story about Jesus being there we
can understand better about the personalities of both Martha and Mary. “38 Now as they were traveling along, He
entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. 39 She
had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His
word. 40 But Martha was
distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said,
"Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving
alone? Then tell her
to help me." 41 But the Lord answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are
worried and bothered about so many things; 42
but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part,
which shall not be taken away from her’ (Luke 10:38-42).” We see Martha was distracted, and also that
Martha calls Jesus “Lord” and then proceeds to tell Him what to do. We also see that Jesus repeats her name two
times when He speaks to her, and I suppose all of us can remember our parents
calling us by our names two times, and that was not good. We see that Mary was one who knew what she
wanted and what she wanted was to fellowship and learn from her Lord. And so we see that Martha was the first one
to come out and talk to Jesus and once again she is telling Him what she wanted
Him to do. As mentioned Martha must have
been listening to Jesus, or she knew her OT Bible as she knew that some day people
would rise from the dead. “"Many of
those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting
life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2).” Notice that this verse in Daniel speaks of
both those who were righteous and those who were not and that they would both
rise from the dead. The difference is
where they would spend eternity, for the righteous would spend it in heaven
with Jesus Christ, while the unbelievers would spend it in hell with the devil
and his unjust angels which is why it was being prepared. Both will receive resurrection bodies, one
will serve the Lord in heaven, and one will have a body that will be able to
stand the fires of hell and not be burned up.
There is a question to be asked here, an obvious question: Which kind of resurrection body do you want
to have? The answer should be simple,
and that is the kind of body that the Lord Jesus Christ had when He was raised
from the dead after being in the grave for three days, after dying on the cross
to pay for your sins. Thank Him for it
and receive Him into your life and you will one day receive a body like His.
We
mentioned in our last SD about the custom that Jewish people had after a loved
one had died and that is that they stayed in their homes to be comforted by
those who came to give them comfort, but we will see that both Martha, (her
first) and Mary would leave these people to go and talk to Jesus. Martha goes first and Mary goes after Martha
tells her that the Lord wanted to see her.
Martha and
Mary will both say to the Lord that if He would have been there their brother
would not have died. I can’t argue with
that statement, and yet there was a greater purpose for Lazarus’ death that
they will see after Jesus raises him from the dead. There were two others that Jesus raised from
the dead, and both of them had not been dead for very long, and so some may
have thought that these two were not dead at all, but Lazarus had been dead for
four days and no one would think that he was not dead.
As
mentioned Martha knew what he Bible taught about the dead being raised. John MacArthur writes “Challenging Martha to
move beyond an abstract belief in the final resurrection to complete faith in Him,
‘Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ This is the fifth of the seven ‘I AM’ deity
claims in John’s gospel…Martha’s focus was on the end of the age, but time is
no obstacle for the One who has the power of resurrection and life (cf. 5:21,
26). Jesus will raise the dead in the
future resurrection of which Martha spoke.
But He was also going to raise her brother immediately. The Lord called her to a personal trust in
Him as the One who alone has power over death.”
We will
conclude looking at the section in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Going back to my 1994 SD I hope that I have
learned some more truths since I did that SD, and one of them has to do about
prayer, which in essence is what Martha was doing while talking to Jesus. There are prayers that I have prayed many
more times than once that have not been answered, and so I have to believe that
it is not the time for them to be answered, or that the answer is no. Either way it will work out for the glory of
God even though I don’t totally understand how it will be at this time.
My Steps of Faith for
Today: Trust the Lord to answer my
prayers so that they will be good for me and bring glory to His name.
Memory verses for the week:
(Romans 6:8) “8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe we shall
also live with Him.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Wicked” (1 Corinthians 5:13).
Today’s Bible question:
“What is the promise of Christ’s coming in Revelation 22:20?”
Answer in our next SD.
8/23/2016 8:12 AM
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