SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/18/2017
10:51 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “The Holy
Spirit Reveals the Truth”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John
16:12-15
Message of the
verses: “12 “I have many more things
to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 "But when He, the Spirit
of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on
His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose
to you what is to come. 14 “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and
will disclose it to you. 15 “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore
I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”
We could sub-title this section as the “Introduction to
John 16:12-15,” as that is what I usually entitle a new section when we first
begin to look at it. I have to say that
I have listened to two sermons on this section of Scripture, both from John
MacArthur as one was from the let 70’s or early 80’s and the other from just
about a year ago. As I listened to these
sermons and as I read the introduction to the commentary from MacArthur’s
commentary I found that the introductions were very long and about something
that I never even thought about as I read this passage, and for that matter
have read it many other times since I became a believer. We have been studying
the things that Jesus is teaching His disciples on the very night before He was
crucified as this began in the later part of chapter thirteen and continues
until the end of chapter sixteen. These
are very important truths that Jesus was teaching His disciples, and although
they would not totally realize the truth of all He was teaching them at this
time because “sorrow has filled their hearts,” they will realize the truth of
these later on when the Holy Spirit reveals these truths to them. Now the Holy Spirit is a big part of what
Jesus is teaching them at this time from chapters 15-16 and what we know about
the Spirit of God is that He is God, the third person of the trinity, and that
He will be the One who will take over the teaching, and the guiding of these
men soon after the Lord Jesus Christ ascends into heaven as seen in the first
chapter of Acts.
So now we come to the introduction to this section, a
section in which Jesus is still speaking about the Holy Spirit where He calls
Him the Spirit of Truth, something that is very important to us as we look at
this introduction. MacArthur has six
pages of introduction on this section of Scripture and the entire introduction
in his commentary along with the two sermons that he preached has to do with the
Word of God, and as I said before I never thought about that when I read these
verse before, however after listening to the sermons and reading the
introduction to this commentary it all makes perfect sense to me now.
The Holy Spirit is the Author of the Word of God, both
the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The Bible was written over a very long period of time and as you know
has 66 books in it, 39 in the OT, and 27 in the NT. The Bible has many
different authors but there is no contradiction in it, no mistakes as some would
want you to believe.
So what Jesus is saying to His disciples is that the
Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit will come upon some of them to write the New
Testament “He will disclose to you what is to come.” Now we know that not all of Jesus’ disciples
wrote books in the NT, but all of them were preachers of the Word and all of
them spoke the truth to their audience as they were filled with the Spirit of
God. The point in all of this to me is
that the Bible, written by the Holy Spirit who used men to write it chose every
word that they were to write on the pages of the Bible and all of it is truth
for the Holy Spirit cannot lie. In one
of the sermons I listened to MacArthur even talked about the tense of a verb that
Jesus used when quoting from the Old Testament to show that even the tense of
verbs is accurate in the Word of God.
There are many good books that one can read which tell
you about the Word of God and so I will not write any more about it except to
say that I believe that in the original writings there were no mistakes in
them, and I also believe that the Bible that I read is accurate as it has been
translated from one of many old manuscripts as there are thousands of them available. Now I just remembered that when I was
studying the last part of the gospel of Mark that John MacArthur mentioned that
there were some twenty-five thousands manuscripts available.
The following quote comes from the last paragraph of
MacArthur’s commentary on the introduction to these verses: “But Jesus did more than just authenticate
the revelation already given in the Old Testament. He also promised to reveal new truth to the
disciples through the Holy Spirit, whose post-Pentecost ministry He had been
discussing since 15:26. This passage,
with its promise of future Spirit-given revelation, is the capstone of that section. It reveals the need, extent, and goal of the
Holy Spirit’s revelation.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: There are very few
things that I can rely on in my life that are true, but one thing I do rely on
is the truth of the Word of God.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to study the Word of God.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Samson.”
Today’s Bible question: “What were the dimensions of the brazen
altar?”
Answer in our next SD.
1/18/2017 11:43 AM
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