SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/17/2017
8:41 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The
Convicting of the Spirit”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
John 16:8-11
Message of the
verse: “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.”
We want to continue looking at what Jesus told the
disciples “The Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning righteousness, because I go to the
Father and you no longer see Me.” When a
person who is an unbeliever is convicted of sin which is what we learned about
in yesterday’s SD as the first point they go from being totally unrighteous to
receiving the righteousness of Jesus Christ which is what Jesus is talking
about here when He speaks of righteousness.
The tables are turned once a person accepts Jesus Christ as this is one
of them many things that happens to a person once they have accepted the Lord
Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord as they receive Christ’s righteousness which is
necessary for anyone to enter into heaven and be with God. Jesus says the following in Matthew 5:20 and
48 “20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the
scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” “48 “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your
heavenly Father is perfect.” The
Pharisees were trying to obtain righteousness on their own but when compared to
the holiness and sinlessness of Jesus Christ it is like filthy rags.
Jesus next says “because I go to the Father and you no
longer see Me” and this provides the supreme evidence of Jesus’ righteousness
as He is once again accepted into the Father’s presence. We read the following in Habakkuk 1:13a “Your eyes are too pure to
approve evil, And You
cannot look on wickedness with favor.”
Philippians 2:9 teaches us “For this reason also, God highly exalted Him,
and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name”
Thirdly, the Holy Spirit convicts the world “concerning
judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.” The most vial and evil thing the world could
have ever done was to reject Jesus Christ and thus put Him on the cross to kill
Him, and yet we know that this was the heartbeat of the Father’s plan, why He
sent Jesus to earth to fulfill, none the less it was still the most wicked
thing the world has ever done. The world
continues to do this to the true followers of Jesus Christ today as it has been
ever since He went back to heaven and the church age began. Why did they do this? The world is incapable of judging righteously
“"Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment’
(John 7:24).” The Spirit however also does
this as He convicts people of their false assessment of Jesus Christ.
It is hard to believe that the ruler of this world, Satan
has been judged, but he has been judged at the cross of Jesus Christ and will
one day soon be kicked out of heaven as we learned when we studied the book of
Revelation “7 And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war
with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, 8 and they were not
strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. 9 And
the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil
and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and
his angels were thrown down with him.”
Let us look also at Luke 10:18 “And He said to them, "I was
watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.” The following verses show us that Satan was
defeated at the cross: Colossians 2:15 “When
He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them,
having triumphed over them through Him.”
Hebrews 2:14 “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He
Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render
powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.” 1 John 3:8 “the one who practices sin is of
the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared
for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” John MacArthur writes “Though Satan has been
defeated and judged, the final sentence against him will not be carried out
until the end of the millennium (Rev. 20:10).
In the meantime he goes about as the god of this age, seeking to capture
and devour souls. The sobering warning
to those who embrace the world system is that since its ruler will not escape
judgment, neither will they, unless they repent. The Devil’s fate guarantees the judgment of
every unrepentant sinner.”
As we conclude this section we must understand that there
are only two possible responses to the convicting work of the Holy Spirit: repentance or rejection. We can repent of our sins as the Holy Spirit
makes it clear to us that we are sinners heading for hell or we can reject His
call and end up in the very place where the ruler of this world will end
up. The choice is yours but please don’t
reject the Spirit’s calling you, rather repent and be saved.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: In nine days it
will be 43 years ago that the Spirit convicted me of sin and saved my soul and
for that I am eternally thankful and desire to tell others about what happened
to me. The following is my testimony as
I wrote it out a few years ago.
My
Testimony
Please allow me to tell you how my relationship with
God began. When I was a young boy I went
to a church that taught us that before we reached our 12th birthday
if we died we would go straight to heaven.
At the age of ten I went fishing with some of my friends, who were
mostly older than I was, and so in order to impress them I began to swear,
swear a lot. It was the beginning of a
habit that I would never be able to stop on my own.
Another thing that happened to me when I was young was
that my mother taught us how she heard that the world was going to end. She told us that winter was going to turn
into summer and then summer would turn into winter and then the world would
burn up. To a young boy this was very
frightening to me.
We fast forward to the summer of 1966 when on the fifth
of July I was inducted into the Army.
This frightened me because there was a war going on and I surely did not
want to die in a war at the age of 19. I
made a deal with God that if He would get me out of the Army that I would stop
swearing, for I knew this was wrong.
There was a medical problem that I had before I went into the army, but
they sent me anyway. I had never had
this problem before, so after being in the Army for three days I was told that
I would be going back home. I had to
keep my deal with the Lord so for three weeks I stopped my swearing, but then
it was back to “normal.” After going
back to my job they checked me for the medical condition and it was gone, never
to return again.
In late 1972 I went to visit a friend in Florida. It was a last minute decision, so I had to
stop over in Atlanta. While in the
Atlanta airport a young couple began to speak to me about what the Bible really
had to say about the end of the world.
This was very interesting to me, and it relieved my fears a bit, but did
not stop the habit of swearing.
In January of 1974 I went back to visit my friend in
Florida, and I must confess that my motives were not good in going there. My friend gave me a series of cassette tapes
by a man named Hal Lindsey that were about what the Bible said about how the
world was going to end. I listened to
one each day and it was if they were speaking right to me. At the end of each message Lindsey told his
audience how they could have a relationship with the Lord. I followed what he said and the first thing
that I noticed was that I had no desire to swear, but I did have a desire to
read the Bible. The thing that I tried
to do on my own was taken away from me never to return again. My fears about how the world was going to end
were also gone, because I understood how it was going to happen.
In 1979 our son was born with a hole in his heart along
with a bad heart valve. In May of 1980
at the age of 18 months the surgeons actually cut his heart into and inserted a
patch in it and put another patch near the valve. It was the longest day of my life to that
point, but because of my relationship with the Lord there was calmness. My son and his wife now have three
children. My question to you is if you
died today would you be 100% sure of going to heaven?
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Silas and Timothy” (Acts
15:40; 16:1).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who was the last of the
military judges”
Answer in our next SD.
1/17/2017 9:26 AM
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