SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/12/2016 8:29 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 The Fatal Causes of Unbelief
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 12:37-43
Message of the verses: “37 But though He had performed so many signs
before them, yet they were not believing in Him. 38 This was to fulfill the
word of Isaiah the prophet which he spoke: "LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR
REPORT? AND TO WHOM HAS THE ARM OF THE LORD BEEN REVEALED?" 39 For this
reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, 40 “HE HAS BLINDED THEIR
EYES AND HE HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES
AND PERCEIVE WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM." 41 These
things Isaiah said because he saw His glory, and he spoke of Him.
“42 Nevertheless
many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were
not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue;
43 for they loved the approval of men
rather than the approval of God.”
We have
been looking at why Israel rejected Jesus Christ as their long awaited Messiah
and have stated that this was not outside the plan of God but in fact it was
the fulfillment of what Isaiah had written, which John quotes in these
verses. Next we see another reason is it
was because of the culmination of years of rebellion, misused privileges, and
forsaking of divine truth. I can’t help
but think of many other nations who have gone down this same path in far less
time and God then did to them what He has done to Israel. Understand that these are principles from God’s
Word that if they are rejected by a nation or a person individually that they
will suffer what Israel has suffered, however the difference is that Israel is
God’s chosen people and God has kind of what we say taken them out to the
woodshed for a spanking and in the future He will cleanse them as we have seen
in our study of Zechariah.
Now as a
result of this culmination of years of rebellion, misused privileges, and
forsaking of the divine truth, they rejected their Messiah when He came to them
and this section that we are in now shows us that God has given up on them at
this time for Jesus has finished His ministry to them and now as we will see
turns to minister to His disciples to teach them the things that they will need
to know after He is gone back to heaven.
John
MacArthur writes “But God’s sovereign, judicial hardening of Israel did not
negate the culpability of those who refused to believe in Christ. As Leon Morris notes, ‘When John quotes ‘he
hath blinded their eyes…’ he does not mean that the blinding takes place without
the will, or against the will of these people…These men chose evil. It was their own deliberate choice, their own
fault. Make no mistake about that.’ D. A. Carson adds, ‘God’s judicial hardening
is not presented as the capricious manipulation of an arbitrary potentate
cursing morally neutral or even morally pure beings, but as a holy condemnation
of a guilty people who are condemned to do and be what they themselves have
chosen.’”
We have given
the example of Pharaoh as he did not believe in God, but believed in his many
gods and therefore hardened his heart against the true living God, and so God
hardened his heart so that he could not believe, which is what Pharaoh desired
in the first place. People are born with
a sin nature which we all get from Adam and it takes a miracle from God to show
them that they are born that way and need a Savior to take their place on the
cross to become sin for them that in turn they may receive His
righteousness. Pharaoh was given much
light to understand about God but he turned away from that light and chose
darkness.
MacArthur
writes “The personal choice involved in rejecting Jesus Christ is illustrated
by ‘the rulers’ who ‘believed in Him.’
Their faith was inadequate, irresolute, and spurious, as John’s note
that ‘because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him’ (cf. Matt. 10:33),
‘for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue,’ indicates. The religious authorities had already decreed
that dreaded punishment, which cut a person off from Jewish religious and
social life, for anyone who confessed Jesus as Messiah (9:22; cf. 7:13). That ‘they loved the approval of men rather
than the approval of God’ gives further evidence that these ‘rulers’ possessed no
more than a superficial religion.” What
these rulers believed in would soon be taken away from them in 70 AD when Rome
would destroy the city of Jerusalem and the temple in it similar to what happened
in 586 when the Babylonians did the same, and they did not learn the lesson
from that historical event.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: As I think about family and friends whom I
pray for, that God would save I wonder if, as the song we quoted in an earlier
SD, applies to them and that gone past the point of no return as their hearts
are hardened like Pharaoh’s was. I pray
not.
My Steps of Faith for
Today: I pray for great wisdom from the
Lord to accomplish the task of being a prayer coordinator for a great project
at our church, wisdom because I am overwhelmed at this task.
Memory verse for the week (Romans 6:13) “13 and do not go on
presenting the members of your body 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: “Foolish” (Galatians 3:1).
Today’s Bible question:
“According to Revelation 1:7, who shall wail because of Christ?”
Answer in our next SD.
10/12/2016 9:10 AM
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