SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/10/2017
9:17 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-1 “The Setting of This Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 17:1a
Message of the
verses: “Jesus spoke these things;
and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, ‘Father, the hour has come;’”
I have said this before when we began looking at the 17th
chapter of John that we will be camped out here for a fairly long time and we
will be in this section for a few Spiritual Diaries. I have to also mention that it seems to me
that the Lord is pulling at my heart to once again teach Sunday school over the
summer, but this time it looks as if things will be a bit different from last
year as our Sunday school program may well stay in the same classes that we are
in for the rest of the year, and if that is the case the teacher in the class
that I go to will not be teaching this summer and thus I may be leading that
class, and if that is the case it seems to me that the 17th chapter
of John would be something that the Lord is speaking to my heart to teach over
the summer. If this is what will happen
then this makes it even more important that I understand things in this chapter
so that I can not only share them on my Spiritual Diaries, but also share them
in class too. It has to be a matter of
prayer to see if this is where the Lord is leading me.
Now we have mentioned that as we finished the 16th
chapter of John that the time that the Lord would spend with His disciples has
ended. I have also mentioned that I have
not heard a good time period as far as when Jesus prayed this prayer and also
when He was at the Garden of Gethsemane praying to the Lord as seen in the
other gospels. Some believe that
chapters 13-16 were all in the upper room, but I have my doubts about that as I
think chapter 15-16 were not in the upper room as Jesus and His disciples were
moving toward Gethsemane during that time period, but at any rate this marks a
change in John’s gospel.
In reading John MacArthur’s commentary for this section
he believes that chapters 13-16 all took place in the upper room, and I have to
say that I usually don’t disagree with what he writes, and perhaps this is true
that all this did take place in the upper room and perhaps it doesn’t make a
difference as to where it took place.
MacArthur gives a review of the teachings of Jesus in chapters 13-16 as
he begins his commentary and since we have spent the last several months going
over these chapters I will not review them at this time as they are all on my
blogs beginning on October 15, 2016.
I will take the time to discuss a little bit about these
chapters in saying that it is very important for us to understand that all of
His disciples were looking forward for Jesus to take over the Roman Empire, but
it was His desire, and the desire of His Father that He lay down His life in
the upcoming hours and that is the basis of His teaching His disciples in
chapters 13-16. MacArthur writes “It is
in this context, after ‘Jesus spoke’ the ‘things’ recorded in the previous
three chapters, that He graciously and fervently prayed for His disciples. As they left the upper room and started their
journey through the city and across the Kidron Valley to Gethsemane, the
disciples would have been unable to separate this prayer from the solemn
instruction they had just received in the upper room. In fact, much of what Jesus had just told
them is repeated in His prayer to the Father:
‘This prayer clearly belongs
with the farewell discourses because it reiterates and sums up various of the
themes found in these discourses: (1) the departure of Jesus (vv. 11, 13); (2)
the joy of the disciples (v. 13); (3) the hatred of the world (v. 14); (4) the
division of the world and the disciples (v. 16); (5) the truth (v. 17); and (6)
the indwelling of Christ in the believers (v.23). (Ben Witherington III, John’s Wisdom [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995],
268).’”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “He rested” (Genesis 2:1).
Today’s Bible
question: “What did Paul know that made
him persuade men?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/10/2017 9:50 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment