SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/9/2016 9:13 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Claim
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference:
John 10:25-31
Message of the verses: “25 Jesus answered them, "I told you,
and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify
of Me. 26 “But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. 27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know
them, and they follow Me; 28 and I give
eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them
out of My hand. 29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than
all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 “I and the
Father are one." 31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.”
What Jesus
is telling them is no difference that what He had told them earlier in His
ministry to them, but they did not believe them then and they will not believe
them now either. Compare what Jesus told
them in John 5:17 and following; with chapter 8:1, 24, and 58, and these verses
from chapter eight were told to them very recently. Jesus tells them that they needed to believe
in the works that He has done in His Father’s name as those works testified as
to who He is. The problem was with them,
not with the Words and works that Jesus had been doing as Jesus tells them “but
you do not believe.” I mentioned the
book I am reading by John MacArthur on the parables and the first parable that
he writes about is the one about the different kinds of soils. At the end of the chapter he concludes that
all people fall into the category of one of these different kinds of soil. He then states that when a believe is giving
out the gospel message to unbelievers, as long as he does it in the correct
manner that this is what is called in the parable the “seed” and so there is
nothing wrong with the seed, but a problem with the soil unless the seed is
given to the person who is described as the good soil, the soil that had been
prepared by the Holy Spirit so when the seed was given to those of that kind of
soil they will accept the seed and become born into God’s family. Now as we look at what Jesus is telling these
spiritual leaders of the Jews it was the right message of “seed” but their
hearts were like the first kind of soil in the parable where the seed fell on
the hard ground and nothing became of it, nothing could grow up from that kind
of soil.
John
MacArthur writes of these men “From the perspective of human responsibility,
the hostile Jews did not believe because they had deliberately rejected the
truth. But from the standpoint of divine
sovereignty, they did not believe because they were not of the Lord’s sheep,
which were given Him by the Father (vs. 29; 6:37; 17:2, 6, 9). A full understand of exactly how those tow
realities, human responsibility and divine sovereignty, work together lies
beyond human comprehension; but there is no difficulty with them in the
infinite mind of God. Significantly, the
Bible does not attempt to harmonize them, nor does it apologize for the logical
tension between them. For example,
speaking of Judas Iscariot’s treachery, Jesus said in Luke 22:22, ‘The Son of
Man is going [to be betrayed] as it has been determined.’ In other words, Judas’s betrayal of Christ
was in accord with God’s eternal purpose.
But then Jesus added, ‘Woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!’ That Judas’s betrayal was part of God’s plan
did not relieve him of the responsibility for his crime. In Acts 2:23 Peter said that Jesus was ‘delivered
over [to the cross] by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.’ Yet he also charged Israel with responsibility
for having ‘nailed [Jesus] to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him
to death.’ God’s sovereignty never
excuses human sin.”
Okay I
believe we will stop right here as this is enough to chew on for a while. I have studied this theology for a long time
and I still don’t understand all of it and the reason is that I am a finite
where God is infinite. I have been told
by different sermons that MacArthur taught on this subject that our brains
would explode if we could understand all of this. I just believe it because this is what the
Bible teaches, that God is sovereign and as a human being I have the responsibility
to have received Christ as my Savior when the Spirit gave me the effectual call
in January of 1974.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I am thankful to the Lord for giving me
eternal life, and although I don’t understand all about how this came about, I
am thankful that it did.
My Steps of Faith for
Today: I desire to get the Word out
to all who will listen to the truth of it so that those who have been prepared
by the Holy Spirit will receive it and be born again.
Memory verses for the week:
(Romans 6:5-7) “5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness
of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection; 6
knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body
of sin might be done away with, so that we are no longer slaves to sin; 7 for
he who has died is freed from sin.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “The Sabbath” (Luke 13:14).
Today’s Bible question:
“Who said ‘Let me die with the Philistines’?”
Answer in our next SD.
8/9/2016 10:22 AM
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