SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/7/2017
7:52 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Christ’s Supreme Courage”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 18:1-4a
Message of the
verses: “1 When Jesus had spoken
these words, He went forth with His disciples over the ravine of the Kidron,
where there was a garden, in which He entered with His disciples. 2 Now Judas
also, who was betraying Him, knew the place, for Jesus had often met there with
His disciples. 3 Judas then, having received the Roman cohort and officers from
the chief priests and the Pharisees, came there with lanterns and torches and
weapons. 4 So Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went
forth.”
I mentioned in our last SD that it was Jesus who was in
control of what was about to happen to Him, and not Judas or Satan, or the
Pharisees, for Jesus came to earth to die, and He was in control of when and
where and how He would die. Many of us
have read this story of the Passion of Christ and perhaps have not realized
this fact that it was Jesus who was in control of all these events. Remember in John 17:1 where we discussed
Jesus’ prayer to the Father and He said “the hour has come.” We spoke about what this meant, was in fact planned
from eternity past for the Father to give the Son a bride as a love gift. We spoke about how this time was pictured in
the Jewish marriage ceremony and on October 26, 2015 I quoted from the commentary
of John MacArthur on Revelation 21:2 the following ““The city is pictured as a
bride because it contains the bride and takes on her character. The imagery is drawn from a Jewish wedding, which
typically had three parts. First was the
betrothal, which was like a modern engagement, but more legally binding. The betrothal of the Lord’s bride took place in eternity past when God
pledged to His Son a redeemed people.
The next stage was the presentation, a time of celebration and feasting
leading up to the actual wedding ceremony.
The presentation of
the bride took place following the Rapture of the church, when believers are
taken to heaven. The third stage
was the ceremony, which
for the Lord’s bride began at the marriage supper of the Lamb (19:7-9) and
stretched through the millennial kingdom. The final stage was the consummation, which corresponds to the eternal
state. John saw the bride adorned
for her husband because it was time for the consummation. Adorned is from the verb kosmos (‘to order,’ or ‘to arrange’); the related noun kosmos (translated ‘adornment’ in 1
Peter. 3:3) is the root of the English word ‘cosmetics.’ The bride has become appropriately ordered in
all her beauty. By this point in
Revelation, the bride concept expands to include not only the church (as it has
since Acts 2), but also all the rest of the redeemed from all the ages who live
forever in the eternal city. This is the
moment described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:28: ‘When all things are subjected
to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected
all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.”
This is important for us to know because as we begin to
look at the events that unfold in chapters 18-19 we see that Jesus Christ came
to purchase His bride by dying on the cross in order to redeem His bride out of
the slave market of sin and nothing was going to stop Him from fulfilling this
which as stated was planned in eternity past.
Jesus was the One who planned His arrest to take place in this rather
remote place and at this exact time. Why?
Well the Jewish leaders were afraid of having Jesus arrested during the feast
time because of the crowds. Jesus had
just prayed for His disciples that none of them would be harmed and if this
took place at another time, in a more public place then Jesus and His disciples
would all be arrested and this was not going to happen. Another thing is the timing of all of this as
we spoke of earlier Jesus had to die at the exact time when the Passover lambs
were killed as He was and is our Passover lamb as Paul explains. “1Co 5:7 Clean out the old leaven so that you
may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover
also has been sacrificed.”
Once more the point I am making is that it was our Lord
who was in control of all that was going on, which is a very important point
for us to believe and understand.
As we move on in the passages we are looking at we see
the following “Judas then, having received the Roman cohort and officers from
the chief priests and the Pharisees.”
Well this could have been as many as a total of 1000 men who came to
arrest one Man, and I am not going to go into the details of how this number
came about but let us just say that there were hundreds of men, led by Judas to
come and arrest Jesus. We also read that
they came with lanterns and torches, along with weapons to seize Jesus. John MacArthur points out that there would
have been a full moon at this time, for remember that the Jewish calendar was a
lunar calendar so this was very predictable. Now as we look at “Jesus, knowing all the
things that were coming upon Him, went forth,” and knowing that we know that He
knew what was going to happen to Him we get a climes of what our focus is on
for these verses which is the “Christ’s Supreme Courage.” Yes Jesus was 100% God and Man and yet as we
look at Luke’s account of His prayer in Gethsemane we see that He was sweating
great drops of blood, so we can see from that the stress that He was going
through. A number of years ago I spoke
at a men’s Bible subject on this subject of Jesus sweating great drops of blood
noting that Jesus went through stress and as I was thinking about this the Lord
seemed to direct me to Philippians 4:6-7 “6 Be anxious for nothing, but in
everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which
surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus.” It seems to me that this is
exactly what Jesus did during that awful night when He was about to die.
John MacArthur writes “Though the apostle John does not
record it, Judas, in history’s most cynical act of hypocrisy, brazenly
approached Jesus and kissed Him (Matt. 26:49; Mark 14:45; Luke 22:47)—the prearranged
signal by which he would point Him out (Mar, 14:44). Nothing more clearly symbolizes the depravity
of his heart and the depth of his sin than Judas’s using a disciple’s kiss as a
traitor’s sign.
In addition to being a recognized gesture of respect and
affection, this kind of kiss was a sign of homage in that culture. Of the varieties of the kiss (feet, hand,
head, then on the garment), Judas chose the one that declared the deepest
homage and love. The kiss on the cheek
with an embrace was appropriate for an intimate friend. Thus the treachery of Judas is the most despicable.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: “1Jo 4:19 Yes, we
love because he first loved us.” Jesus
first loved me so that I could love Him, for I could not love Him if He had not
died for me to take away my sin, and yet there are times when I betray Him like
Judas did and this is most hurtful to my heart when I do this.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
Remember the great courage that Jesus
had in dying for me as He not only died for me but He became sin for me and was
separated from His Father for me.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “With blindness” (2 Kings
6:14-18).
Today’s Bible
question: “Thou shalt not muzzle the
mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn’ was spoken for whose sake?”
Answer in our next SD.
4/7/2017 9:08 AM
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