SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/9/2017
9:37 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 Intro to John 17:1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 17:1
Message of the
verses: “1 Jesus spoke these things;
and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come;
glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You.”
I will try and pick up where we left off yesterday in
what will be our final introduction to this important first verse in the
important 17th chapter of John.
For those who have followed from time to time the
Spiritual Diaries that I post onto my blog you may remember that I have written
about the ministry of Jesus Christ in the following way. First let me mention that I want to write
about this because of the phrase “the hour has come.” If we go back to the early part of Luke’s
gospel we see Jesus in the temple when he was 12 years old talking to the
religious leaders of that day. He was
there unknown by Mary and Joseph as they were looking for Him. When they found Him after searching for Him
for three days they asked Him why He would do this and He replied something
like “Didn’t you know that I would be about my Father’s business.” When we look at our verse from John 17 we see
that the hour has come for Him to finish His Father’s business which of course
was to make payment for the sins of those whom the Father had chosen before the
world began. As Jesus was ready to die
on the cross He said the words “It is finished.” The word means paid in full, a word from the
Greek that was stamped onto a prisoner’s release paper after he had served his
time for the crime he committed. In the
case of Jesus He had paid for the sins of the world as He finished the business
of His Father while on earth.
Now this 17th chapter of John as we have noted
is a prayer, a prayer from the Son of God to His Father, and I think it would
be proper to say lead by the Holy Spirit as all of Christ’s life was while on
earth, so what we have is something found no other place in Scripture as it
involves the talking together of those three Persons of the trinity. We have mentioned that prayer was very common
with our Lord while on earth as the gospels mention different times He
prayed. John MacArthur mentions this in
his commentary:
“From beginning to end Jesus’ earthly ministry was marked
by frequent times of prayer. He prayed
at His baptism (Luke 3:21), during His first preaching tour (Mark 1:35; Luke
5:16), before choosing the twelve apostles (Luke 6:12-13), before feeding the
5,000 (Matt. 14:19), after feeding the 5,000 (Matt. 14:23), before feeding the 4,000
(Matt. 15:36), before Peter’s confession of Him as the Christ (Luke 9:28-29),
for some children brought to Him (Matt. 19:13), after the return of the seventy
(Luke 10:21), before giving the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:1), before raising
Lazarus from the dead (John 11:41-42), as He faced the reality of the cross
(John 12:28), at the Last Supper (Matt. 26:26-27), for Peter (Luke 22:31-32),
in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:36-42), from the cross (Matt. 27:46; Luke 23:34, 46),
with the disciples He encountered on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:30), and at
the ascension (Luke 24:50-51).
“But of all the prayers of Jesus, the one recorded here
in the seventeenth chapter of John’s gospel is the most profound and
magnificent. Its words are plain, yet
majestic; simple, yet mysterious. They
plunge the reader into the unfathomable depts. Of the inter-Trinitarian
communication between the Father and the Son, and their scope encompasses the
entire sweep of redemptive history from election to glorification, including the
themes regeneration, revelation, illumination, sanctification, and
preservation. The veil is drawn back and
the reader is escorted by Jesus Christ into the Holy of Holies, to the very
throne of God.
“The value of its infinite richness is heightened by its
uniqueness. There is no other chapter in
the Bible like it. As one commentator
explains:
‘This chapter embraces the longest recorded prayer of our
Lord while He was on earth. No doubt He
prayed other prayers as lengthy as this, for we know He spent much time in
prayer and in communion with His heavenly Father, but God did not see fit to
give theses other prayers to us as the Holy Ghost spoke to holy men. We have many of the sermons of Jesus, many of
His parables; but only this one lengthy prayer. (Oliver Greene, The Gospel According to John).
“The
setting of this prayer (as Jesus comforted His disciples immediately
before the cross), the
substance of it (as a heartfelt petition from the Son to the Father),
and the length and detail of it, as well as its theological richness,
contribute to its unique and unsurpassed
significance.”
The highlighted portions are the main topics we will be
looking at as we move forward in the details of this first verse.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Proverbs.” I am not sure that I agree with this answer
as the middle verse in the Bible is from the book of Psalms, somewhere around
the 118th Psalm, but that is the answer I have on my card.
Today’s Bible
question: “What did God do on the
seventh day?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/9/2017 10:12 AM
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