SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/15/2017
8:42 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 The
Convicting by The Spirit
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 16:8-11
Message of the
verses: “8 "And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and
judgment; 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 and concerning righteousness, because I go to
the Father and you no longer see Me; 11 and concerning judgment, because the
ruler of this world has been judged.”
It has been my practice to write a shorter Spiritual
Diary on Sunday’s because of the things that I have to do on the Lord’s Day. After our church service we usually go and
have lunch with my wife’s father who is a little bit over 99 years old, and
then come back home and then back to church for our evening service so my SD’s
are a bit shorter.
I really like this portion of the sixteenth chapter of
John’s gospel as we see some of the work that Jesus says that the Holy Spirit
will do for those who are in the world, and when you think about this everyone
is born into the world’s system and are in need of the conviction of the Holy
Spirit in our lives in order for us to become believers, but there is more than
that which is described in these verses as the Holy Spirit still deals with those
who are not believers and maybe never will become believers as seen in these
verses. So the main application to these verses is what the Holy Spirit does in
His ministry to those in the unbelieving world.
In the beginning of his commentary on this section John
MacArthur writes about the position that the unbelieving world is in and
therefore what the Holy Spirit does to redeem them, but as mentioned we need to
look at the nature of the unbelievers who are in the world from different
verses. Unbelievers by nature are rebels
against God and they are hostile to Jesus Christ, and you don’t have to have a
big imagination to see this happening in the world today. Let us look at Ephesians 2:1-3 “1 And you were dead in your trespasses and
sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the
course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the
lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature
children of wrath, even as the rest.”
Paul is telling the Ephesians what they were before they were
saved. Let us move to Ephesians 4:18-19 “18
being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of
the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and
they, having become callous, have
given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity
with greediness.” Colossians 1:21
says “And although you
were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,”
again talking about what these believer’s were before they were saved. I am not going to quote Romans 1:18-32, but
on your own take a look at that as this will show you more about the heart of
the unsaved man.
In conclusion I will quote Romans 3:10-18 which shows us
the utter inability for man to seek God.
“10 The scriptures endorse this fact plainly enough. There is none
righteous, no, not one. 11 There is none
that understandeth, There is none that seeketh after God; 12 They have all turned aside, they are together
become unprofitable; There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one:
13 Their throat is an open sepulchre;
With their tongues they have used deceit; The poison of asps is under their
lips: 14 Whose mouth is full of cursing
and bitterness: 15 Their feet are swift
to shed blood; 16 Destruction and misery
are in their ways: 17 And the way of
peace have they not known; 18 There is no
fear of God before their eyes (Phillips).”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Paul” Acts 21:39.
Today’s Bible
question: “In what country did Esau
settle?”
Answer in our next SD.
1/15/2017 9:04 PM
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