SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/4/2016 6:55 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Intro. To John 14:28-31
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 14:28-31
Message of the verses: “28 "You heard that I said to you, ’I go
away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because
I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 “Now I have told you
before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. 30 "I will
not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has
nothing in Me; 31 but so that the world
may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get
up, let us go from here.”
As we look
at these four verses, the last four verses in the 14th chapter of
John, we will see what the Jesus’ death will mean to Him. Jesus was heading to the most important
portion of His ministry on earth which was His death and resurrection and these
are the central truths of the Christian faith.
John MacArthur quotes J. C. Ryle who declared more than 150 years ago “the
grand peculiarity of the Christian
religion. Other religions have laws
and moral precepts—forms and ceremonies,--rewards and punishments. But other religions cannot tell us of a dying
Saviour. They cannot show us the
cross. This is the crown and glory of
the Gospel.”
John
Walvoord writes the following that is also recorded in MacArthur’s
commentary: “No event of time or eternity
compares with the transcending significance of the death fo Christ on the
cross. Other important undertakings of
God such as the creation of the world, the incarnation of Christ, His
resurrection, the second coming, and the creation of the new heavens and the
new earth become meaningless if Christ did not die…
“In the
study of Christ in His sufferings and death, one is in a holy of holies, a
mercy seat sprinkled with blood, to which only the Spirit-taught mind has
access. In His death Christ supremely
revealed the holiness and righteousness of God as well as the love of God which
prompted the sacrifice. In a similar way
the infinite wisdom of God is revealed as no human mind would ever have devised
such a way of salvation, and only an infinite God would be willing to sacrifice
His Son.”
I have
mentioned earlier in a SD or maybe two that when we look at the life of Jesus
from the book of Luke when He was twelve years old teaching the spiritual
leaders of Israel in the Temple who were in awe of His teachings, we then see
His Mother and Joseph find Him there and they spoke to Him, asking why He was
where He was there in the temple. Jesus
told His parents that they should not be surprised to find Him in the temple
for after all He was about His Father’s business, for that is why He came. The final words of Jesus from the cross were “it
is finished,” and the Greek word tel-eh’-o, and this word means “to perform,
execute, complete, fulfil, (so that the thing done corresponds to what has been
said, the order, command etc.).” So
Jesus finished the work that His Father gave Him to do, which was die on the cross
for the sins of those who would accept this free gift as this was the ultimate
goal of the incarnation. MacArthur adds “Christ’s
once-for-all sacrifice is, of course, central to the life of His true
church. Baptism pictures believers’
union with Him in His death (cf. Rom. 6k:3); in celebrating Communion they ‘proclaim
the Lord’s death until He comes ‘(1 Cor. 11:26); in preaching the gospel they ‘preach
Christ crucified’ (1 Cor. 1:23).”
We could
spend hours and hours and pages and pages of what Christ death means, and we
will look at some more of it in our next SD as we continue to look back, to
remember what the death of Jesus Christ means, means to those who are believers
and those who chose not to believe in what was done on the cross for them.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 3:1).
Today’s Bible question:
“Who sat a Jesus’ feet and heard His Word?”
Answers in our next SD
12/4/2016 7:21 PM
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