SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/12/2017
8:10 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Settings of this Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 17:1a
Message of the
verses: “1 Jesus spoke these things;
and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come;”
Now we get to the part “lifting up His eyes to heaven” in
this SD. God’s throne is in heaven and
so one looks up to talk to the Lord in heaven.
Let us look at a verse in Luke and we will look at chapter eighteen and
verse thirteen: “"But the tax
collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes
to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ’God, be merciful to me, the
sinner!’” We see here that this man was
a sinner, and he knew that he was a sinner and so he did not want to look up to
heaven, but beat his breast asking God to be merciful to him because he was a
sinner.
Now we see in our partial verse for today that Jesus
calls God His Father which means that He was going to be submitted to what He
wanted Him to do, and also He wanted to depend on Him. Jesus said this even though He was in
equality with God being His Son. John
MacArthur writes “In contrast to the common Jewish practice of referring to God
with a plural pronoun, ‘our Father,’ Jesus addressed Him as ‘My Father’ (e.g.
Matt. 7:21; 10:32-33; 11:27; 12:50; 16:17; 18:10, 19; 20:23; 26:39, 42; Luke
22:29; John 5:17; 6:32, 40; 8:19, 38, 49, 54; 10:18, 29, 37; 14:7, 20, 21, 23;
15:1, 8, 15, 23, 24; 20:17). Gerald
Borchert explains that cultural significance of that personal title:
‘Jesus came into a Jewish
world that had developed a remote view of God, one that needed angels to carry
messages. The people had ceased to use
the name of God for fear of taking his name in vain, just like the Prodigal
Son, who could speak of ‘heaven’ but not use the name God (cf. Luke 15:18,
21). Into this context of speaking of
God by means of surrogate titles Jesus came and called God his Father.’”
Now as we begin to look at this prayer we can see that
Jesus’ prayer went to His Father and it emphasized this intimate fellowship
that He shared with God. This is a
familial relationship with God and was completely foreign to the Jews of Jesus’
day. Now we can learn from the
Scriptures that at this point anyone who believes in Jesus as their Savior and
Lord is granted this same spiritual intimacy with God, and this has been going
on since the church began in Acts chapter two.
We now want to discuss another significant reason that Jesus
referred to God as His Father. We have
learned that Jesus has made Himself equal with God as seen in John 5:18 “For
this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because
He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father,
making Himself equal with God.” Now on
the other hand, Jesus was demonstrating His distinctness from the Father, since
He was clearly not praying to Himself.
This shows that the Son is equal to the Father yet distinct from
Him. At this point Jesus was in the
position of being in a human body as He had laid aside His glory so that He
could be in a human body otherwise no one could have looked at Him, and while
in this human body He submitted to the Father and was filled with the Holy
Spirit to do what the Father desired for Him to do, which was come to earth to
die on the cross paying for the sins of those who would accept His
forgiveness. John MacArthur adds this on
these two distinctions we are talking about here: “Thus, while He is equal to the Father in
essence, even sharing in His eternal glory (17:5), He is not a mere mode of
manifestation of the Father. Rather, the
Son is a distinct person within the Godhead.
By calling God His Father, Jesus was underscoring the fundamental
reality of the Trinity.
We have seen in earlier chapters of John that Jesus had
said that His hour had not yet come, but now He is opening His prayer to the
Father by stating that “the hour has come.”
This phrase refers to the consummation of His earthly ministry, which
encompasses His death, resurrection, and also His ascension.
We will look more into this in a detailed manner in our
next and last SD for this section.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Two” (Luke 5:2).
Today’s Bible question “Who
said ‘There is a lad here, who has five barley loaves, and two small fish’?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/12/2017 8:40 PM
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