SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/29/2016 11:18 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 Intro to John 12:27-34
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: 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?’”
Now I want
to remind you that the theme of this entire section (John 12:27-34 is that of
Jesus Facing the Cross and we have been looking at the death of Christ in these
introduction Spiritual Diaries and we will be looking at the second part of the
death of Christ and that is the subject of the New Testament, and as we look at
it through the NT we must realize that roughly one-fifth of the material in the
gospel accounts is devoted to the events of the last few days of the life of
Jesus Christ. We have mentioned that chapters
12-19 of John’s gospel deal with this time period while chapter 20 is about His
resurrection and chapter 21 is about bringing Peter back into the proper
fellowship with the Lord after he had denied Him three times.
John
MacArthur writes “The death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is the
climactic point to which all previous material concerning His life leads and
from which the Acts and all the Epistles flow.”
Now we want
to look at a third section concerning our Lord’s death to see that it is the
chief purpose of the incarnation as seen in Mark 10:45 “"For even the Son
of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom
for many.’” Now by the way this is the
key verse in Mark’s gospel. Now we will
look at the book of Hebrews and chapter two and verses fourteen to
fifteen: “14 Therefore, since the
children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the
same, that through death
He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all
their lives.” On my other blog I am
posting my study from the book of Hebrews and in today’s I looked at Hebrews
2:11, so these verses will come up shortly on that blog.
Let us look
at 1 John 3:5, and 8 “5 You know that He appeared in order to take away sins;
and in Him there is no sin. 8 the one who practices sin is of the devil; for
the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this
purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
John
MacArthur quotes Henry C. Thiessen on his summarizing of the importance of
Christ’s death in connection with the incarnation: “Christ did not come primarily to set us an
example, or to teach us doctrine, but to die for us. His death was not an afterthought or an
accident, but the accomplishment of a definite purpose in connection with the incarnation. The incarnation is not an end in itself; it
is but a means to an end, and that end is the redemption of the lost through
the Lord’s death on the cross.” (This
statement was written in 1949.)
The fourth
reason is Jesus’ death was the constant theme of His own teaching. In my Bible listening today I listened to Matthew
16-18 and in chapter 16 I saw Peter’s confession of who Jesus is along with
Jesus then telling His disciples that His purpose for coming was to die which
brought about Peter’s rebuke which brought about Jesus’ answer to Peter’s
rebuke where He said “"Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to
Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s."” Yes Satan knew that Jesus came to die for man’s
sins, and for his destruction and what Satan tried to do was to prevent Jesus
from dying at the exact time the Passover lambs died, but he failed in doing
that as this was the plan of God that it happen this way.
Jesus told
Nicodemus that He was going to die on the cross and there are many other
accounts in the gospels where this is a part of His teaching as we see in the
chapter we are now studying in John’s gospel.
The fifth
theme of Jesus death comes from the apostolic teachings and we will first look
at 1 Cor. 15:3 “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also
received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” Now we want to look at a small section from
the first sermon preached after the church began as seen in Acts 2:22-24 where
Peter says “22 "Men of Israel,
listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with
miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just
as you yourselves know- 23 this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God,
you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. 24 “But
God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was
impossible for Him to be held in its power.”
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the main themes, if not the
main theme in the book of Acts.
Sixth, the
New Testament Epistles also instruct in the theology of Christ’s death as seen
in Romans 5:8-10 “8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been
justified by His blood, we
shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we
were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more,
having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” In this section Paul notes that the cross
demonstrates God’s love for repentant sinners, justifies them, and He also
reconciles them to God.” (John MacArthur)
Well we
still have more to look at in this introduction to this section. I once listened to a sermon from a Pastor who
preached and preached and then he said that this was just the introduction, but
the main part was shorter than his introduction.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: To just stop a minute and reflect on all the
things that we are learning about the death of Jesus Christ, how He left heaven
to come to a sin cursed earth to live a perfect life being the God/Man,
fulfilling the Law by living this perfect life, and the reason that He came was
to die in my place, and the reason that He did that was because of His love for
me and that is to me mind blowing. I
think that I will do a better job of understanding this once this sinful body
of mine is gone and I am in the presence of my Savior and my Lord.
My Steps of Faith for
Today: Live my life today like the
Lord will come back soon to take me and the rest of the church to meet Him in
the air.
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: “Many Publicans and sinners” (Matthew 9:10).
Today’s Bible question:
“Who said, ‘My little daughter lieth at the point of death’?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/29/2016 12:07 PM
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