SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/14/2017
10:51 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 The Request for Spiritual
Protection
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John
17:11b-16
Message of the
verses: “Holy Father, keep them in
Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We
are. 12 "While I was with them, I
was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and
not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would
be fulfilled. 13 “But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world
so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. 14 “I have given them
Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world,
even as I am not of the world. 15 “I do not ask You to take them out of the
world, but to keep them from the evil one. 16 “They are not of the world, even
as I am not of the world.”
Now as we begin this section we see that Jesus calls God “Holy
Father,” and I find it remarkable that this is the only time that this title
for God is used in the Word of God. I
found this hard to believe and so I did a search of the entire Bible using my
Online Bible program searching for those words and only John 17:11 came
up. John MacArthur writes that “The
emphasis on God’s holiness sets the stage for the rest of this section (in vv.
11-19), which targets the holiness of the disciples in the midst of the hostile
and wicked world. Their relationship to
God was a sanctifying one. They were
unholy men, but through the Son they had been brought into a purifying
relationship with Holy God.” Any true
believer in Jesus Christ can come up with this same conclusion that before
Christ your wants and desires were all completely different than they are since
you became a believer in Jesus Christ.
Look at the life of Peter who was a successful fisherman and yet when
Jesus called Him he left his fishing boats and nets and began to, as Jesus
said, fish for souls.
Jesus first asked the Father to “keep them” something that we also see in
verse fifteen “"I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil
one.” This first “keep them” Jesus is
asking the Father to keep them in “Your” name.
MacArthur writes that “God’s name represents all that He is, though in
this case there is a marked emphasis on His holiness (since Jesus just referred
to Him as ‘Holy Father’). Jesus asked
the Father to guard the disciples according to His holy character and
attributes. The request is
all-encompassing, and extends to all believers, as A. C. Gaebelein explains:
‘That keeping means
everything. Keeping from falling away,
from evil doctrines, from being overcome by sorrow, or in tribulation and
suffering, keeping them in life and in death.
From this first petition of our Lord’s prayer we learn the absolute security
of a true believer. If a true believer,
one who belongs to Christ, who has been given by the Father to the Son, for
whom the Son of God intercedes, can be lost, it would mean the loss of Christ’s
glory, the loss of a part of the travail of His soul.’ (The Gospel of John [Wheaton:
Van Kampen Press, 1936], 320).”
At this time I want to give a list of the attributes of
God that I use to praise Him in my prayer list:
“Praise the Lord for His attributes, for who God is: God is HOLY, good, glorious, pure, sovereign,
gracious, merciful, long-suffering, truth, measureless, omnipresence,
omnipotent, omniscience, all wise, immutable, eternal, God is wrath, God pardons,
God is Jealous, faithful, God is love and just.” Remember the attributes of God are who He is
and all of them bring glory to His name.
Jesus speaks of His perfect oneness with the Father as he
says “the name which You have given Me.”
What we see here is that God’s holy character is seen in the Son. MacArthur adds that “His perfect oneness with
the Father by noting that the name of the Father is also ‘the name which, the
Father has ‘given’ the Son.” We have
mentioned that the name is who God is and reflects on His holy character as
seen in His attributes and so when we look at John 1:18 we read “No one has
seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father,
He has explained Him.” We then compare
this with John 14: 8 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it
is enough for us." 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with
you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen
the Father; how can you say, ’Show us the Father’?” Whatever God the Father is Jesus has shown to
us, even if we have not seen Jesus in person, we see Him in His Word, and so we
see the Father in His Word too as Jesus has explained the Father to us there. MacArthur concludes “Jesus had provided the
disciples with a perfect picture of who God is and what He expects.”
We will conclude this SD by looking at why the Father’s
protection was essential for the disciples.
The first reason is that His protection secured the glorification of the
disciples and this also applies to all believers too. Peter writes that believers “are protected by
the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last
time” (1 Peter 1:5). Next we want to
look at Romans 8:28-30 “29 For those
whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His
Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; 30 and these whom He predestined, He also
called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He
justified, He also glorified.” These
verses reveal God’s providential care which forges and unbroken chain that
leads from eternity past to eternity future.”
The second reason why the Father’s protection was
essential for His disciples is that the Father’s protection secures their unity
with one another. Jesus prays that “they
would be one even as Christ and the Father are one.” MacArthur writes “The unity the Lord had in
mind is the spiritual unity that all believers possess, namely, the life of God
in their regenerated souls, secured to them forever by His power and
presence. The emphasis here is not on a fluctuating,
visible unity in the church, but on the real, constant unity that is
invisible. The Lord is praying for the
essential oneness of believers that they share in common eternal life. This prayer is answered every time a sinner
is regenerated.
“The unity of invisible eternal life implanted in Christ’s
followers is the foundation for a visible unity that crosses all organizational
lines and produces an effective gospel and testimony to the lost…It is produced
by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:3), who indwells every believer (Rom. 8:9). Practically, this spiritual unity of divine
life produces a common love for the Lord (1 John 4:19-21), commitment to His
Word (Eph. 4:13), affection for His people (Col. 3:14), and separation from all
that is ungodly and worldly (1 John 2:15-17).”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I am thankful
that I can get to know God through knowing His Son as I read and study about
His life in the Gospels found in His Word.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to study the Word of God each day.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “In the house of the Lord.”
Today’s Bible
question: “Who did Abraham bury in the
cave of Machpelah?”
Answer in our next SD.
3/14/2017 11:44 AM
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