SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/12/2017
10:10 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: The
Conflict With The World PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 16:1-4
Message of the
verses: “1 "These things I have
spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. 2 “They will make you
outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you
to think that he is offering service to God. 3 “These things they will do
because they have not known the Father or Me. 4 “But these things I have spoken
to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of
them. These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with
you.”
We want to begin by looking at the word “hour” which
appears in verse two and explain how John uses this term in his gospel
account. He uses this term that
especially talk about the death of Christ.
The following are some examples: 2:4; 4:21, 23; 5:25, 28; 7:30; 8:20;
12:23, 27; 13:1; 16:25; and 17:1.
Sometimes it is easy to forget that John wrote this account around 90 AD
and so he had lived through all of this with our Lord and so as he looks back
he points out things that the Spirit of God wants him to write for the specific
reason of showing Jesus Christ as eternal God equal with the Father and the
Holy Spirit and also it is his desire that the things that he writes will
convict people of their sin and trust Christ as their Savior and Lord: “30
Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the
disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these have been written so that you may
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may
have life in His name (John 20:30-31).”
In the first part of verse two we see the phrase “They
will make you outcasts from the synagogue,” which we discussed when we were in
the ninth chapter of John talking about the man born blind and Jesus’ healing
of him. The following quote comes from
my Spiritual Diary on July 13, 2016: “The
term apsosunagogas unknown to secular
writers, meant to be excommunicated or put under a ban and a curse, a
banishment that meant being cut off from the religious and social life of Israel;
it was therefore a dreaded punishment (cf. 12:42; 16:2).” Now this same banding is how the missionaries
spoke of what would happen to a person who left the Mormon “religion.” They would have little or no social life with
other Mormons as they would consider them to be dead.
“In a sermon that I listened to on this section John
MacArthur told that there were three different degrees of this banishment from
the synagogue which is the Greek word we looked at “apsosunagogas.” It could have a time of a month, or one a bit
longer or in the case of this man which we will see in our next SD it will be
for life.”
Now something worse was prophesied by Jesus that would
happen to those who follow Him, and that would be that they would be killed for
the cause of Christ, and the sad thing is that those who would do this would
think that they are “offering a service to God.” We mentioned that this was the case with Saul
of Tarsus “9 "So then, I thought to
myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
10 "And this is just what I did in
Jerusalem; not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having
received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to
death I cast my vote against them. 11 “And as I punished them often in all the
synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at
them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities (Acts 9:9-11).” These verses are a part of what Paul was
telling King Agrippa at a hearing that he had with him while in prison before
he was sent to Rome. (Now I have to
mention that this also fulfilled a prophecy that Jesus gave in Acts chapter
nine about Paul giving testimony to kings.)
Now the word service used in this section is the same word used in the
Scriptures to speak of religious service or worship as seen in Romans 9:4;
12:1; Hebrews 9:1, and verse 6. As we
look around our every increasing cruel world we see Christians being killed for
the cause of Christ as a part of a service to Allah in many countries around
the world.
John MacArthur writes “How could seemingly religious
people commit such atrocities in the guise of worshiping God? ‘These things,’ Jesus explained, ‘they will
do because they have not known the Father or me.’ Far from serving God, such people do not in
any sense know the true God; no one who hates Jesus Christ or His followers (1
John 4:20; 5:1) knows the Father (John 8:19; 1 John 3:1; cf. John 5:23; 14:7;
15:21). Failing to know God is willful,
inexcusable ignorance (Rom. 1:18-32), and those who manifest it do not have
eternal life (cf. Rom. 10:2-3).”
We will look at the contents of verse four in our next
SD. I have to say that one of the
reasons that I do not say that Christianity is a “religion” is because of
things like we just talked about.
Christianity is a relationship, a relationship with Jesus Christ as all
true believers do not do anything to earn merit with God as the song says “Jesus
paid it all, all to Him I owe, sin has left a crimson stain, He washed it white
as snow.” A religion says that I have to
earn my way to heaven, I have to work for it.
Paul writes “8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works,
so that no one may boast.
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which
God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Notice the work we do is done after we are
saved, not to save us but to do because we love our Lord and desire to please
Him.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: As this world
keeps on getting more wicked all of the time and as things around the world
look more and more like what will happen during the tribulation period we
surely are getting closer to the return of our Lord as He comes in the clouds
to receive His bride, this cause me to want to continue to work for the Master,
to do His will to tell others about who He is so they too can be saved from
this awfulness that is about to come upon the world.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to guide me in the works He
wants me to do for the cause of Christ.
Memory verse for the
week: (Romans 6:12) “Therefore do not
let sin reign in your mortal bodies so that you obey its lusts;”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Israel was taken into
captivity” (2 Kings 17:6).
Today’s Bible
question: “Why should we wear all the
armor of God.”
Answer in our next SD.
1/12/2017 10:54 AM
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