SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/27/2016 10:01 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Facing the Cross
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Intro to John 12:27-34
Message of the verses: “27 "Now
My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ’Father, save Me from this
hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. 28 “Father, glorify Your
name." Then a voice came out of heaven: "I have both glorified it,
and will glorify it again." 29 So the crowd of people who stood by and
heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, "An angel
has spoken to Him." 30 Jesus answered and said, "This voice has not
come for My sake, but for your sakes. 31 “Now judgment is upon this world; now
the ruler of this world will be cast out. 32 “And I, if I am lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men to Myself." 33 But He was saying this to indicate
the kind of death by which He was to die. 34 The crowd then answered Him,
"We have heard out of the Law that the Christ is to remain forever; and
how can You say, ’The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this Son of Man?’”
As I look
at this section I remember first of all that this is the third time that God
the Father has spoken from heaven when people heard it. Remember at the baptism of Jesus the Father
spoke and then when Jesus was up on the mountain with three of His disciples He
spoke again, and now in this passage we hear His voice once more. He states that He has glorified Jesus, His
Son before and perhaps He means that this happened when Jesus raised Lazarus from
the dead “40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not say to you that if you believe,
you will see the glory of God?" 41 So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and
said, "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. 42 “I knew that You
always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that
they may believe that You sent Me’ (John 11:40-42).”
I think
that in this section that we see a little bit about how Jesus was actually
feeling about going to the cross. Jesus
was born to die, and to die on a cross of wood in order to pay the price of my
sin and for everyone else who has called upon His name for salvation. We will see more of the emotion that Jesus
had as He moved closer to the cross, things like what Luke records when Jesus
was praying and He began to sweat great drops of blood, and by the way this has
a medical term called “Hematidrosis.” The question
that I have is why was Jesus so emotional through all of this and I suppose
that because of His humanity, but I really think there is more to it. We have to remember two things in my view to
answer this question and the first thing to remember is that God hates sin, one
of the OT prophets states that God cannot be in the presence of sin He hates it
that much. God is perfectly holy and now
we see that the God/Man, Jesus Christ is about to become sin, now He will not
be made a sinner, but He will be made sin for us who knew no sin as Paul writes
and there is a difference. I think
another reason for His emotion is that He will be separated from His Father,
which is something that has never happened, nor will it ever happen again. What we see in that statement is the great
love between the persons of the trinity and this also causes this emotion. I suppose that we can say that dying could be
added to this list because the death that He died He died to sin once for all
as Paul writes to the Romans and that is different than the death that a
believer now dies for Paul also writes that absent from the body is present
with the Lord.
So we are going to be
talking a lot in the next few months about what Jesus did as He was about to go
to the cross as a great part of John’s gospel is about this last week of His
life on planet earth.
John MacArthur writes as
he begins this 4th chapter in his commentary on the last part of the
gospel of John, a chapter that is named “Facing the Cross:” “Of all the truths in the Christian faith,
the death of Jesus Christ, accompanied by His resurrection, is the most precious. Had He not died, there would be no substitute
for sin. Were there no salvation, there
would be no hope. And were there no
hope, there would be no future but hell.”
We will continue to look
at this introduction of these verses as we look further into the death of Jesus
Christ. I can also pretty much you that
there will be more SD’s on this introduction to this section of John’s gospel.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: One of the things that I look forward to when
I get to heaven is that I will not have to deal with the conflict of sin as I
do now, and as every believer has to while on this earth. I think that when that happens that I will
understand a lot better how Jesus felt as He went to the cross to become sin
for me, and also to be able to have that same kind of love that flows between
the persons of the trinity is something else I look forward to. As a believer I have both conflict and peace,
peace that I know that my sin has been paid for and conflict because of the
flesh that I still have that makes me want to sin. I guess we as believers all have a bit of schizophrenia
in us.
My Steps of
Faith for Today: I want to
remember the truth of the verses that I am committing to memory, to remember
that when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord that at that very
moment I died to sin.
Memory verse for the week: (Romans
6:13) “13 and do not go on presenting
the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to
God as those alive from
the dead, and
your members as instruments of righteousness to God.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:
“The dove” (Genesis 8:9).
Today’s Bible question: “How many
children did Zacharias and Elizabeth have before John the Baptist?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/27/2016 10:51 AM
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