SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/3/2017
9:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-6 Intro
to John 16:6-10
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 17:6-10
Message of the
verses: “6 "I have manifested
Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You
gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 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. 9 "I ask on their
behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given
Me; for they are Yours; 10 and all
things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified
in them.”
I said that this was going to take a while to look at
this introduction on 2-26 and today I hope that we will be able to finish it as
we begin this SD by looking at the following “they were Yours and You gave them
to Me.”
We see from these words in our Lord’s prayer that this
shows us that even before their conversion the disciples belonged to God. Let us look at John 6:37 “"All that the
Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly
not cast out.” This verse shows us the
same thing that verse one of chapter seventeen has shown us. There are many references that show that all
true believers were chosen by God in eternity past and also that Christ came to
pay for their sins, and as mentioned in many earlier SD’s the sermon “Twin
Truths” by John MacArthur which I quoted earlier in our study of John gives us
wonderful information that God has called us, Christ died for us, and that the
Spirit calls us along with our responsibility to accept this free gift.
Next we want to look at the statement about the disciples
have kept the Father’s Word. MacArthur
writes “That statement introduces the element of obedience essential to
salvation (cf. Phil. 2:12-13). ‘12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always
obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with
fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in
you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.’ That obedience, of course, is not a
meritorious [praiseworthy] work that contributes to something to salvation (cf.
Gal. 2:15-16), ‘15 "We are Jews by
nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles; 16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not
justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we
have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ
and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.’ But is
rather the inevitable result of genuine saving faith (cf. Eph. 2:8-10). Thus,
to say that the disciples had obeyed the Father’s Word is merely another way of
expressing that their faith was genuine.
The New Testament inseparably joins saving faith and obedience, so much
so that obedience is often used as a synonym for faith (e. g., John 3:36; Acts
6:7; Rom. 1:5; 16:26; 1 Peter: 1:2). It
is also the sure mark of sincere love for Jesus Christ (John 14:15; 21, 24;
15:10, 14). (Interestingly, Jesus used
forms of this same Greek word for ‘keep’ (tereo)
in vv. 11, 12, 15 when He asked the Father to keep the disciples. Thus, the Lord asked the Father to keep those
who keep His Word.)”
So we can conclude that the disciples keep the Father’s
Word because they were a part of those who the Father chose in eternity
past.
MacArthur concludes “The rest of this section (7-10)
builds on those inseparable twin truths.
Having summarized them in verse 6, Jesus continued to explain why He
knew the Father would grant His requests regarding the disciples: because they had believed in Him as the Son
(vv. 7-8) and because they were a gift to Him from the Father (vv. 9-10).” That is what we will be looking at as we
continue in this section of Scripture.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “That it was going to rain” (1
Kings 18:41).
Today’s Bible
question: “What were the four divisions
in the Corinthian church?”
Answer in our next SD.
3/3/2017 10:01 AM
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