SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 9/14/2016 9:57 AM
My
Worship Time Focus: The Hostile Scheming of
the Leaders
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: John 12:10-11
Message of the verses: “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.”
As
I look at these verses and see the highlighted portion in the last verse I can
see that the Jewish leaders were more concerned about themselves than they were
anything else. If the people were to
believe in Jesus then they would lose money and authority, which is what they
were most concerned about, not what was best for the people they were supposed
to be serving.
The
following paragraph is a quote from Dr. Warren Wiersbe: “But the fact that Lazarus was a walking
miracle put him into a place of danger:
the Jewish leaders wanted to kill him as well as Jesus! Our Lord was right when He called them
children of the devil, for they were murderers indeed (John 8:42-44). They threw the healed blind man out of the
synagogue rather than permit him to bear witness to Christ every Sabbath, and
they tried to put Lazarus back into the tomb because he was leading people to
faith in Christ. If you will not accept the evidence, you must try
to get rid of it!” I guess not
much has changed in the last 2000 years!
I
think that one thing people of that time period as well as our own forget is
that God is in control, He has a plan that absolutely no one will alter, and
all of it will bring glory to the Lord.
The Jews at that time were ruthless leaders that did not want anything
in their way of ruling like they wanted, and if it did they wanted to get rid
of it. We remember what their chief
priest prophesied that One Man should die for the nation so that the nation
would not be destroyed, and Jesus of course not only died for the nation, but
also for all the world, but the last part of that prophecy came true in the
opposite way as the Romans destroyed the Jewish nation in 70 AD, and by the way
Moses said this would happen in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, but
of course did not say the date it would happen, just that it would happen as
the Jews were once again taken out of their land because of their
sinfulness.
John
MacArthur concludes this section and this first chapter in his commentary by
writing: “No one is neutral regarding Jesus
Christ; as He Himself warned, ‘He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who
does not gather with Me, scatters’ (Luke 11:23). Whether loving and serving Him, like Mary and
Martha, being indifferent and vacillating toward Him, like the crowd, or hating
and opposing Him, like Judas and the chief priests, everyone takes a stand
somewhere. What that stand is determines
each person’s eternal destiny, since ‘there is salvation in no one else; for
there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we
must be saved’ (Acts 4:12).”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I must always be ready to tell others of my
faith in Jesus Christ and must always be ready to defend Him.
My
Steps of Faith for Today:
Do a much better job in studying my memory verses so that I can meditate
upon them.
Memory verses for the week: (Romans 6:10-11) “For the death that He died,
He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves dead to sin,
but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Hope” (2 Corinthians 3:12). “12 Seeing then that we have such hope, we
use great plainness of speech.” (The
NASB uses the word “boldness” and not plainness.)
Today’s Bible question: “What did Jesus say about the salt losing its
savour?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/14/2016 10:36 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment