SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/21/2016 9:19 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Rejection by the Pharisees
Bible Reading and
Meditation Reference: John 12:17-19
Message of the verses: “17 So the people, who were with Him when He
called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to
testify about Him. 18 For this reason also the people went and met Him, because
they heard that He had performed this sign. 19 So the Pharisees said to one
another, "You see that you are not doing any good; look, the world has
gone after Him.’”
I think
that I mentioned that the title of this chapter in John MacArthur’s commentary
is “The Gospel Reaches Out: A Preview of Gentile Salvation.” As I listened to the recent sermon on this
section of Scripture the light came on to what we see in this section (17-26),
and what we are looking at is the rejection of the Messiah from the children of
Israel (in the persons of the Pharisees), and then the Gentile accepting the
gospel in the people who came to Philip and then go to Jesus. After that we see that our Lord makes a provision
or an invitation to all. The Lord Jesus knows that He would be rejected by the
Jews, and this can be seen in our study of the 11th chapter of
Zechariah which we are now looking at, and then that the Gentiles will come to
know Him as Savior and Lord which begins in the 10th chapter of Acts
and then proceeds throughout the rest of the book of Acts, and in fact will
continue until the Lord returns for His Church at the rapture. Now when we looked at the 4th
chapter of John we learned that the very first person that Jesus told that He
is the Messiah was the woman at the well who was a Samaritan.
We will not
look at the rejection of the Messiah by the Pharisees. When we looked at what is traditionally called
the events of Palm Sunday we saw two groups of people come together to escort
Jesus into Jerusalem and we mentioned that because of this event Jesus was
forcing the Jews to crucify Him on the exact day that He was to be crucified,
that is on the Passover celebration, something they did not want to do. As we look at this group escort Jesus into
Jerusalem we see the Pharisees say to one another “You see that you are not
doing any good; look, the world is going after Him.” We know that this was hyperbole, but the fact
was that when it comes down to it that people from every tribe and nation will
have representatives who will come to the Lord, so we could say that this was
another prophecy made by these Pharisees, although I am sure that they did not
realize it. Their concern was to do away
with Jesus, not knowing that forty years after they would do away with Jesus that
they too would be done away with along with the scribes and the priests as prophesied
by Zechariah in the 11th chapter of his book.
It is worth
noting that the crowds who were cheering for Jesus thinking that if He had the
power to raise Lazarus from the dead He would have the power to remove the yoke
of Rome which was around their necks.
The fact is that in the end times when the Lord returns He will do that
as Daniel tells us that there are two phases of the Roman Empire and the second
phase will be in power when Jesus returns to planet earth as seen in Revelation
chapter 19, but He did not come for that purpose as He came to remove the yoke
of sin that ever person born of Adam has.
So as the
Pharisees look at this situation they feel that they are doomed, and the only
way out was to kill Jesus, and so around that time Judas comes to them to set
up a plan to rid them of Jesus, so they think, and I suppose this lifted their
hearts.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: When I think about those people who were
looking for a Messiah that would take care of the issues that they were facing
at the time and when He did not do this they abandoned Him, I think of the
times when perhaps I am facing some physical problems and then my prayers are
not answered for the healing of them, then I have to remember that there will
come a day when I receive a new body and all will be well, but in the mean time
I have to continue to trust the Lord to teach me what He wants through those
problems. “He said to me ‘My grace is
sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness,’ Most gladly, therefore
I will rather boast in my weakness, so that the power of Christ may dwell in
me.”
My Steps of Faith for
Today: Trust the Lord to continue to
work in my life even though at times I don’t realize what He is doing.
Memory verses for the week:
(Romans 6:12) “12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies
so that you obey its lusts;”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Satan” (Ephesians 2:2).”
Today’s Bible question:
“Where shall the living righteous meet the Lord when He returns?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/21/2016 10:00 AM
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