SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/12/2016 9:05 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
The Vine
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 15:1a, 5a
Message of the verse: “I am the true vine…I am the vine
As we have moved through the gospel of John we have seen that the words “I am” are used by Jesus seven times including what we are looking at today. Now I want at this point, before we answer the question I posed in our last SD, to look at a section from John MacArthur’s sermon “I Am the True Vine” that speaks to these “I am” statements: “The divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ is here declared in verse 1: “I am the true vine,” He says. And in verse 5 again: “I am the vine.” How is this a claim to deity? Because of the verb “I am.”
“Back in Exodus, chapter 3, when Moses came before
God in the wilderness and asked His name, God said, “My name is I Am That I
Am.” The Tetragrammaton:
the eternally existent one; the one of everlasting being; the always is, and
always was, and always will be one. Theologians call it the aseity (The
self-sufficiency of God) of God, the eternal being of God. He is the I
Am.
“Throughout His preaching, teaching, healing,
discipling ministry, Jesus continually declared that He is God, He is
God. He said things like, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself
am working.”
“In a context of discussion about the Sabbath, He
reminds them that, “The Sabbath doesn’t apply to God because God is at work all
the time; and the Sabbath doesn’t really apply to Me either because I, like
God, am at work all the time.” They were infuriated that He would make
such a claim. That was in chapter 5 of John’s gospel.
“Later in chapter 8 Jesus said, “If I glorify
Myself, My glory is nothing. It is My Father who glorifies Me of whom you
say, ‘He is our God.’ And therefore if God, who is your God, glorifies Me
as God, you ought to also glorify Me.” And again they were offended at
such perceived blasphemy.
“In chapter 10, He even said it more concisely: “I
and the Father are one, one in nature and essence.” In that same chapter,
chapter 10 and verse 38, He said, “Though you do not believe Me, believe the works that you may
know that the Father is in Me and I in the Father.”
“All through His life and ministry, He claimed that
He is God. Every time Jesus said, “My Father,” which He said many, many
times – every time He said, “My Father,” He was underscoring that He had the same nature as
God. And His Jewish audience did not miss the claim. They
were not at all confused.
“In fact, in chapter 5, verse 18, this is what we
read: “For this cause, therefore, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill
Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God His
own Father, making Himself
equal with God.” They understood that that is exactly what He was
doing, exactly. And one of the ways that He did that was by taking to
Himself the name of God “I Am” and applying it to Himself.
“There’s a series of those claims throughout the
gospel of John. He says, “I am the Bread of Life. I am the Living
Bread that came down from heaven. I am the Light of the World. I am
the Door; I am the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd. I am the Resurrection and
the Life. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” And then He makes
the stunning, inescapable claim, chapter 8, verse 58, “Before Abraham was born,
I am eternally existing.”
“Jesus is none other than the great I Am, the
eternal God in human flesh. Is that important to believe? Listen to
this, John 8:24, “Unless
you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”
“Can I say that another way? If you don’t believe in the
deity of the Lord Jesus, you’ll go to hell, that simple. No matter
how religious you are, how moral you are, how well your intensions might
measure up with the best of humanity: if you do not believe that Jesus is God,
you will go to hell.
If you believe He is a created being of any kind, no matter how noble or how
elevated, you will go to hell. You will die in your sins, which
means you will die without forgiveness. The penalty is eternal
punishment.”
Now
I want to deal with the question from yesterday’s SD by looking at Psalm 80:8 “You
removed a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it.” Maybe you think that this is a strange
answer, but what the Psalmist is saying here is that Israel is God’s vine. Jeremiah 2:21 says “21 “Yet I planted you a
choice vine, A completely faithful seed. How then have you turned yourself before Me Into the
degenerate shoots of a foreign vine?”
Now this verse shows that Israel proved to be a fruitless vine and as we
studied through the Old Testament we found this to be true of Israel as the OT
laments Israel’s failure to produce good fruit, and it also wars of God’s
impending judgment on them. Hosea 10:1
also laments this: “1 Israel is a
luxuriant vine; He
produces fruit for himself. The more his fruit, The more altars he made;
The richer his land, The better he made the sacred pillars.” There are other passages like this but I want
to quote one more from Ezekiel 15:1-8 “1 Then the word of the LORD came to me,
saying, 2 "Son of man, how is the
wood of the vine better than any wood of a branch which is among the trees of
the forest? 3 “Can wood be taken from it to make anything, or can men take a
peg from it on which to hang any vessel? 4 “If it has been put into the fire
for fuel, and the fire has consumed both of its ends and its middle part has
been charred, is it then useful for anything? 5 “Behold, while it is intact, it
is not made into anything. How much less, when the fire has consumed it and it
is charred, can it still be made into anything! 6 "Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, ’As the wood of
the vine among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for
fuel, so have I given up the inhabitants of Jerusalem; 7 and I set My
face against them. Though they have come out of the fire, yet the fire will
consume them. Then you
will know that I am the LORD, when I set My face against them. 8 ’Thus I
will make the land desolate, because they have acted unfaithfully,’"
declares the Lord GOD.”
Ok so I
guess I lied and have a couple of more quotes to give you and the next is from
Isaiah 5:1-7 “1 Let me sing now for my well-beloved A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard.
My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. 2 He dug it all around,
removed its stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower
in the middle of it And also hewed out a wine vat in it; Then He expected it to produce
good grapes, But it
produced only worthless ones. 3 “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and
men of Judah, Judge between Me and My vineyard. 4 “What more was there to do for My vineyard that I
have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did
it produce worthless ones? 5 “So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I
will remove its hedge and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and
it will become trampled ground. 6 “I will lay it waste; It will not be pruned
or hoed, But briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to
rain no rain on it." 7 For
the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel And the men of Judah
His delightful plant. Thus He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed;
For righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.”
There is a
similar story that Jesus told in the book of Matthew 21:33-43 that I will let
you read for yourself, but I think you see the point in all of this that Israel
was God’s vine, but failed to produce fruit and now in John 15:1 Jesus begins
this lesson by saying “I am the true vine,” He is saying that I am God and I am
the true vine.
John
MacArthur quotes Andreas J. Kostenbeger “Theologically, John’s point is that
Jesus displaces Israel as the focus of God’s plan of salvation, with the
implication that faith in Jesus becomes the decisive characteristic for
membership among God’s people.”
MacArthur
adds “Alethinos (true) refers to what
is real as distinct from a type (cf. Heb. 8:2; 9:24), perfect as distinct from
the imperfect, or genuine rather than what is counterfeit (cf. 1 Thess. 1:9; 1
John 5:20; Rev. 3:7, 14; 6:10; 19:11).
Jesus is the true vine in the same sense that He is the true light (John
1:9), the final and complete revelation of spiritual truth, and the true bread
out of heaven (John 6:32), the final and only source of spiritual sustenance.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Now because Jesus is the true vine I can draw
strength from Him through the Holy Spirit to do the things that He has planned
for me to do as spoken of in Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in
them.”
My Steps of Faith for
Today: Trust that the Lord, the true
Vine, will continue to teach me the things that He wants me to learn in order
to bring glory to His name.
Memory verse for the week: (Romans 6:8) “8 Now if we have
died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Solomon” (1 Kings 1:32-35).
Today’s Bible question:
“Who wrote most of the Proverbs?”
Answer in our next SD.
12/12/2016 9:55 AM
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