SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/8/2017
10:20 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“Christ’s Supreme Power”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
John 184b-6
Message of the
verses: “and said to them,
"Whom do you seek?" 5 They answered Him, "Jesus the
Nazarene." He said to them, "I am He." And Judas also, who was betraying
Him, was standing with them. 6 So when He said to them, "I am He,"
they drew back and fell to the ground.”
Now if I’m not mistaken this is the only reference of this
event in the gospels and I believe the reason for this is that in John’s gospel
he is showing the deity of Christ and so since this event showed the power of
Christ John puts it in his gospel.
Once again we see how Jesus who was the intended victim
takes charge of the situation as He asked them whom do you seek. Now as we think about this if it were not the
will of Jesus to go to the cross He would not have asked that question, but
since it was His will to do this, since as John 17:1 said that His hour had
come, He takes charge of this and will have it exactly the way that He wants it
to happen, for after all this is why Jesus came to earth and it was going to be
done His way, He was in control. Now if
you look at the highlighted part of verse five I have highlighted “I Am” and
the word “He” is not in the original Greek.
What is Jesus saying? He is
saying to them that He is Jehovah, the same term that He used when He was
talking to Moses when Moses asked Him who He was and He said “I am that I Am.”
MacArthur writes “Before relating the crowd’s startling
response to Jesus’ words, John inserts the parenthetical statement that ‘Judas
also, who was betraying Him, was sanding with them.’ This seemingly insignificant detail stresses
yet again Jesus’ absolute mastery of the circumstances. John wants to make it clear that Judas was
merely one of those who experienced what was about to happen. Judas had absolutely no power over Jesus (cf.
19:11); he jolted to the ground with the rest of those present.”
At the mention of His name “I Am” those who had come to
arrest Him fell to the ground. All that
Jesus had to do was speak His name which is the name of God and His enemies fell
to the ground showing His supreme power, showing that He was in control and
things would go His way. We mentioned in
yesterday’s SD how many could have been in the crowd that came to arrest Jesus
and everyone of them fell to the ground.
Now think about this and think about what this looked like seeing all
the Roman soldiers and the Pharisees, and the Temple police all at once fall to
the ground at the mention of His name.
When I was listening to the sermon that goes along with
this section by John MacArthur he mentioned how some have tried to explain
this. One commentator stated that they
were in rows and when the first row fell, they fell into the next row knocking
all of them down. The Bible talks a lot
about the power of God’s spoken word. In
Genesis we read that God spoke and the world was created, not only our earth,
but everything we see in our universe and even what we don’t see in our
universe was created at the spoken word of God.
Yes it is a fact that God is in complete control of what is going on in
our world despite what people think and His plan is going perfectly toward the
way that He wants it and one day soon there will be many believers leave this
planet at the rapture of the church, both the dead in Christ who will go a
split second before those who are alive will go to meet the Lord in the
air. Shortly after that the seven year
Tribulation period will begin ending with the physical return of our Lord Jesus
Christ to stop the battle of Armageddon, separate the sheep from the goats,
remove Satan, the antichrist, and the false prophet from earth to be placed in
hell, and then set up His 1000 year kingdom, followed by the un-creation of all
He created in Genesis and then believers, His bride will all go onto the eternal
kingdom that is described in the last book of the Bible.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I love a movie
when the bad guys are taken care of by the good guys as justice is served and
as I look at the supreme power of our Lord I know that this will happen because
that is the way He planned it.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to give me the grace to do
what He has planned for me to do as I live my life for Him.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Ours” (1 Corinthians 9:9-10).
Today’s Bible
question: “Jesus said, ‘My house is the
house of…’what?”
Answer in our next SD.
4/8/2017 10:49 AM
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