SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/4/2017
10:02 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Because They Had Believed in Him
as the Son”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 17:7-8
Message of the
verses: “7 "Now they have come to know that
everything You have given Me is from You; 8
for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received
them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that
You sent Me.”
The first thing I want to do is go to a quote that was
actually written before the last quote that we ended with in our last SD, as
this will explain why we are not actually including verse six in this Spiritual
Diary:
“The disciples, then, were
among those who kept the Word that had been revealed to them. From the heart, they had responded in genuine
faith to the truth they had received. At
the same time, Scripture recognizes that they had done so because they were a
gift from the Father to the Son, having been among those whom He sovereignly
chose in eternity past and called effectually in time for salvation. The rest of this section (vv. 7-10) builds on
those inseparable twin truths. Having
summarized them verse 6, Jesus continued to explain why He knew the Father
would grant His requests regarding the disciples.”
Now the first reason that
the Father would grant the request of Jesus is “Because They Had Believed in
Him as the Son.”
In our Sunday school class since sometime in September we
have been studying the book of Habakkuk, which is a small book included in the
section that is referred to as the Minor Prophets, minor because they are small
in length, and not minor in the truths that they present. This book is three chapters and begins with
the prophet seemingly balling out the Lord for not doing anything in response
to sinful Judah. God then tells the prophet
that He will take care of this by sending the Babylonians to destroy Judah,
which history shows that He did. This
was not the answer the prophet wanted to hear and it is believed that what He
wanted to hear was that God would send a spiritual revival to revive
Judah. As we study this book I can’t
help but see something similar in the lives of the disciples of Jesus as all of
them were sure that Jesus was going to bring the promised kingdom into Israel
which meant that He was going to destroy the Roman’s who were oppressing them. Now the Old Testament, especially the
prophets are full of God’s promises of a coming kingdom for Israel and what
that kingdom would actually look like.
However the OT is also full of prophecies of their Messiah that would
come to die for them. I want to look at
a couple of passages from 1 Corinthian 15:
“1 Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to
you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast
the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 3 For I
delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died
for our sins according to
the Scriptures, 4 and that He was
buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1-4).” Now what we are seeing in verses 7-8 of John
17 is that the disciples, after being with Jesus were finally beginning to
understand what His mission was in coming to earth. Now remember what Jesus first prayed to the
Father in John 17:1 Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven,
He said, "Father, the
hour has come;” now we went over that verse earlier, but as I have
thought more about this little phrase I am realizing that, at least to me, it
is one of the most important phrases in all of the Word of God. I think that His disciples were finally
realizing this too because they had believed in Jesus as the Son of God. We have talked earlier that this little
phrase goes all the way back to eternity past when God the Father planned that
He would give a love gift to His Son, which included the Son coming to earth to
die on the cross to claim this love gift that the Father had and would give to
the Son, and if you are a believer in Jesus Christ you are a part of that love
gift that the Father had and gave to the Son.
Now as we continue to study this prayer we have to remember something that
I also spoke of earlier and that is that we have the wonderful privilege of
listening in on a prayer between two Persons of the trinity, and in this prayer
we are mentioned, although not by name, but we will see later that we are
mentioned so stay tuned for that. We
know that Jesus had promised to His disciples that they would receive the Holy
Spirit which came to them on the Day of Pentecost and then they understand why
Jesus came and died and would begin to spread the Word to others.
Let us look at a few verses to show us that His disciples
realized who He was:
“Matthew 16:16 “Simon Peter answered, "You are the
Christ, the Son of the living God."”
Mark 8:29 “He continued by questioning them, "But who do you say
that I am?" Peter answered and *said to Him, "You are the
Christ."” Luke 9:20 “And He said to
them, "But who do you say that I am?" And Peter answered and said,
"The Christ of God."”
I realize that these verses
are centered around the same thing, but nevertheless we do see that His
disciples knew that Jesus was their promised Messiah. In John 17:6 we have seen that they had kept
His Word and so proven to be true disciples.
“So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you
continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine (John 8:31).”
Now if we go back to the Old Testament and begin towards
the beginning in the book of Genesis we can see God giving truth in stages to
the OT saints. Think about Able who was
told what to bring as a sacrifice and was killed by his brother he obeyed what
God told him to do. Noah was told by God
to build a boat and he did it, he obeyed what God told him to do. Abraham was told by God to leave his idol
worshiping nation and go to the Promised Land, which he did. Now as we go to the New Testament and think
about Jesus’ disciples they were responding to the truth that Jesus was giving
them. Now as we move past the cross when
the realized more truth they responded to that truth and obeyed God. Now you know that this is coming, that is we
have the whole truth revealed in the entire Word of God and by God’s grace we
need to obey it, which first of all means that we must agree with God that we
are born sinners with no way of getting right with God on our own, but that
Christ has provided for us, through His death on the cross salvation if we
accept that. Then we can begin our walk
with the Lord by studying the Word of God so we can walk with Him in obedience.
Ok enough for today as we want to look more at this
subject in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Thinking about “the
hour has come” and that I am a love gift to the Son from the Father has brought
joy to my heart this morning.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to learn and grow in my walk with
the Lord.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Those following Paul, Apollos,
Cephas, and Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:12).
Today’s Bible
question: “Which book contains the
scripture ‘Thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from
their sins’?”
Answer in our next SD.
3/4/2017 11:00 AM
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