SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/6/2016 7:42 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Intro to John 12
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 12:1-11
Message of the verses: “1 Jesus, therefore, six days before the
Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the
dead. 2 So they made Him a supper there, and Martha was serving; but Lazarus
was one of those reclining at the table with Him. 3 Mary then took a pound of
very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His
feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
4 But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said,
5 "Why was this perfume not sold
for three hundred denarii and given to poor people?" 6 Now he said this,
not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as
he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it. 7 Therefore Jesus
said, "Let her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of My burial. 8
“For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me." 9
The large crowd of the Jews then learned that He was there; and they came, not
for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He raised from
the dead. 10 But the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death also; 11
because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and were believing
in Jesus.”
We have been studying the gospel of John since
November 24, 2015 and one of the things that we have talked about comes from
John 20:30-31 which states the reason that John wrote his gospel: “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.”
The gospel of John is a gospel that is wrapped around seven signs, and
John says that these signs that he has written about were performed to show his
readers that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and then he goes on to say
that by believing this you may have life in His name. He lies the simple truth of the gospel of
Jesus Christ put in terms that a child can understand, and yet as we have seen
in our study there was a great division of those who believed and those who did
not believe. I for one would have a hard
time not believing that Jesus is who He claimed to be when if I saw Him bring
Lazarus back from the dead, who had been dead for four days, and yet there were
those who not only did not believe in Him, but wanted to kill Him, which as we
continue in our study we will see that the succeed.
We come to
the 12th chapter of John’s gospel and all of the public signs are
not complete, along with most of the “I Am” statements showing those who would
listen, that Jesus claims to be God. We
come first of all to a dinner given in honor of Jesus and also of Lazarus, and
we see things that we have already seen before, that is Martha serving and Mary
sitting at the feet of Jesus. We also
see in this setting the true colors of Judas, along with those who would come
and look in at what was going on at this party for the Lord, something that typically
happened during that period of time. We
mentioned this in an earlier SD when we talked about Jesus at a dinner with one
of the Pharisees and another woman who was a harlot was doing the same thing as
Mary does in this section. This woman
was standing looking at what was going on and because of her love for Jesus
burst onto the scene to anoint His feet with perfume, just as Mary does here.
So as we
look at this scene we see something that has happened since Jesus came to earth
to die on the cross for those who would accept His sacrifice, and that is
division, for after all we see all history is broken up between BC and AD,
before Christ and “anno Domini” which is Latin for In the year of the Lord, and
this also speaks of human destiny. I
wonder if the calendar will change at the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom
as perhaps there will be a countdown or a count-up to when it will end.
John
MacArthur divides this section into five varied reactions to Jesus: “Martha responded with heartfelt service,
Mary with humble sacrifice, Judas with hypocritical self-interest, the people
with hollow superficiality, and the religious leaders with hostile scheming.” We will begin looking at the first section in
our next SD.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I think that it would be nice to have a
combination of the characters of Martha and Mary. Martha had her good qualities as she served
Jesus by fixing food for Him, and Mary as she sat at His feet and learned from
Him. To have the patient ability to
listen to others is something that I wrote about in my SD on 12-01-2002 “By the grace of the Lord I will become a
better listener to others for the cause of Christ, which is the best cause of
all.”
My Steps of Faith for Today: Still
working on that listening characteristic.
Memory verses for
the week: (Romans 6:8-10) “8 Now if we
died with Christ, we believe that we also shall live with Him, 9 knowing that
Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no
longer is master over Him. 10 For the
death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He
lives to God.”
Answer to yesterday’s
Bible question: “Jesus Christ and Him
crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Today’s Bible
question: “Jesus was the seed of what
Old Testament king?”
Answer in our next
SD.
9/6/2016 8:43 AM
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