SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/12/2017
7:26 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 Intro
to John 17:11-19
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John
17:11-19
Message of the
verses: “11 "I am no longer in
the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. 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. 17
"Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. 18 “As You sent Me into
the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 “For their sakes I sanctify
Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.”
Just a reminder that this prayer that Jesus prays is
broken up into three parts, the first part we looked at 1-5 we saw Jesus
praying for Himself, and then in verses 6-19 He prays for the disciples and
then in the remaining verses 20-26 He prays for all who would come to Him
through the message that the disciples would proclaim about Him. Now the verses that we are previewing now
(11-19), we see His prayer specifically deals with the fact that He is leaving
His disciples.
We have been studying much about the eleven disciples
that remained after Judas had left to go and betray the Lord, and we saw Peter
telling the Lord that He would die with Him, and then the Lord rebuking him
telling him that he would deny three times that he even knew the Lord’s
name. In the gospel of Luke after this
happened Jesus told Peter that he would pray for him. The rest of the disciples also said that they
were ready to die with Jesus, and so we see that these men, these disciples of
Jesus were truly in need of prayer because at this time they had no idea what
it was that was going to happen to Jesus, nor what it was that would soon
happen to them. We have the advantage of
knowing the entire story, but these men at this time did not realize all that
was about to happen.
Now we have also spoken about who these disciples of
Jesus were, and learned that none of them was particularly savvy or
resourceful, and later on we see that the thing that they were noted for the
most is that they had been with Jesus, something that was much better than the
so called higher education that the Pharisees had. Yes it was quite a collection of humanity
that Jesus chose to turn the world upside down with, as Peter, Andrew, James
and John were fishermen, and perhaps Thomas, Philip, and Nathanael, at times
called Bartholomew were also fishermen.
We know that Matthew was a tax collector which made him despised by the
Jews and that Simon had been a political revolutionary against the Romans as he
is called Simon the Zealot. I guess that
we could say that these were ordinary men who had ordinary weaknesses. We realize that Peter had what is called “foot
in mouth disorder” and John and James were hot headed as they were called “sons
of thunder,” and one time wanted to call down fire from heaven to burn a village
that was giving them trouble. Now as we
look briefly at the history of these men we see that it was very important for
Jesus to pray for them in the way that He was doing in these verses that we are
previewing.
John MacArthur writes “From a human perspective, this
ragamuffin group of followers was anything but extraordinary or impressive (cf.
1 Cor. 1:16-31). Yet they were called to
continue Jesus’ work in the world after He had gone—having been given the
responsibility of taking the gospel throughout the world (Matt. 28:18-20; cf.
Acts 1:8), and shepherding the church through their teaching and oversight (cf.
Acts 2:42; 6:4). They played a vital
role in the future of the Christian faith, because God had chosen them to tell
the world of redemption through His Son (cf. Eph. 2:20).
“It is no wonder, then, that Jesus interceded for them,
and that they bulk of His prayer concentrates on the eleven men. His confidence was not in their resolve or
resourcefulness (of which they had little), but in the power and love of His
Father. Jesus knew that the Father would
hear and answer His prayers, not because the eleven were inherently capable,
but because they were part of those whom the Father had promised Him from
before the foundation of the world. The striking
reality of prayer is that is is not designed to change God’s will, but to call
for its fulfillment. Furthermore, the
Lord purposely prayed aloud so that His disciples could hear Him and be
strengthened and encouraged.”
I hope that we will be able to finish this introduction
in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: When I look
back at my life before Christ and now look at what He has done for me since He
called me as His own I can say that in many ways I am totally surprised.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to trust the Lord to change me more
and more into His image.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Jairus’s daughter, a widow’s
son, and Lazarus” (Mark 5, Luke 7, John 11).
Today’s Bible
question: Who said ‘Weep not; she is not
dead but sleeping’?”
Answer in our next SD.
3/12/2017 8:04 AM
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