SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/19/2017
10:49 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 Christ’s
Power over death was Manifested in His Dying
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
John 19:31-37
Message of the
verses: “31 Then the Jews, because
it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross
on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs
might be broken, and that they might be taken away. 32 So the soldiers came,
and broke the legs of the first man and of the other who was crucified with
Him; 33 but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did
not break His legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear,
and immediately blood and water came out. 35 And he who has seen has testified,
and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe.
36 For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, "NOT A BONE OF
HIM SHALL BE BROKEN." 37 And again another Scripture says, "THEY
SHALL LOOK ON HIM WHOM THEY PIERCED."”
Let me begin by telling a story of a man who was in a
video that I had to watch when I was working at my regular job at Ford Motor
Company’s Cleveland Casting Plant. It
was a safety video that hopefully made you think more about safety when you
were working in what was a very dangerous place to work. When you were working around molten cast iron
with water all around it there was always the possibility of an explosion that
could cut your life short. There was a
man in this video who left for work one morning and on his way out the door he
told his wife that he loved her and then went onto work. The narrator on the video said that this
would be the last thing that he would ever say to his wife as he was killed
that day. My point in this is that many
times death comes as a complete surprise, as there are things left unsaid,
plans that were not finished, dreams that were not realized, and perhaps hopes unfulfilled. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ was no surprise
as His death was planed exactly how it would happen in eternity past and was
fulfilled exactly how it was planned.
Jesus says the following in John 10:17-18 “17 “For this reason the
Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18 “No one has taken it away from
Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have
authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My
Father."”
We saw in our last section of John’s gospel that Jesus
stated “It is finished,” and then He gave up His life, and as John 10:17-18
states He did it just as He said He would do it, on His own terms. As we read through the gospel records we see that
there were many times when Jesus’ life was in danger, but that could not happen
for Jesus had to die on the cross exactly when the Passover lambs were to die,
and I am sure that during the exact time when Jesus gave up His life that there
were thousands of lambs dying at that exact same time, but Jesus death was to
fulfill what those Passover lambs pointed to for many years, since the time
when God brought Israel out of the land of Egypt.
The next section we will look at causes me to become
angry, not quite as angry as when the Jews would not enter the place where
Pilate was conducting the false trial of Jesus because they did not want to
defile themselves so that they could not celebrate the Passover, but this
section is almost as bad when the Jews ask Pilate to have the legs of those
being crucified so that they would not be there while they were celebrating the
Passover. Jesus was already dead at this
time as we see in our section but we will deal with that later. John MacArthur calls the action of the Jews “an
act of blatant, nauseating hypocrisy,” and I could not agree more.
The Romans, cruel people that they were, would many times
leave the bodies on the cross to rot or to have the birds eat them or even wild
animals eat them and of course the Jews did not want to have this happen and
spoil their feast. Crucifixion was a
very cruel way to execute a person and one of the ways that people died from
this form of execution was their weight of their bodies caused them to sag
making it impossible for them to breathe and thus they would die and if their
legs were broken then they could not push themselves up to breathe thus
hastening their life.
I think that is enough for one day as we will pick up the
rest of this section in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Sin has caused
mankind to do some horrible things as history has proven. The death of Jesus Christ was a horrible thing
to happen to pay for the horrible things that sin has caused. We have mentioned the horrible physical
things that men did to Christ as we wrote in our past SD’s but the most
horrible thing that happened to Christ was that He became sin for us, and also that
He was separated from His Father as His Father poured out His wrath upon His
Son to pay for my sin, and for all who would bow the knee to accept this
forgiveness.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to cause me to remember what
my sin caused for my Lord.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Samson” (Judges 14:5-6).
Today’s Bible
question: “What was the king of Egypt
called?
Answer in our next SD.
5/19/2017 11:27 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment