SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/24/2017
8:46 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 The Life of Christ
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 2:22
Message of the
verses: “22 "Men of Israel,
listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with
miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst,
just as you yourselves know-“
Peter confronts the “men of Israel” and asks them to
listen to him as he speaks of Jesus the Nazarene and then tells them what God
did through Him while He was on earth.
Jesus of Nazareth had died in their place for their sins and even though
He had been rejected by most of Israel they could find salvation through what
He did for them on the cross.
Jesus of Nazareth is the name that Jesus went by and it
was even found on His cross. Jesus the
Nazarene came from heaven to a small Galilean village to live as He grew up
there helping His earth father in his carpenter shop until the time when He
began His ministry. Jesus of Nazareth
who at this time when Peter was preaching about Him was now at the right hand
of His Father interceding for His own as their High Priest.
We want to look at the next phrase Peter uses here “a man
attested” to them “by God.” John
MacArthur writes “Apodeiknumi (‘attested’)
has various shades of meaning. It is
used in 1 Corinthians 4:9 to speak of exhibiting something. In Acts 25:7 it
conveys the idea of proof. Second
Thessalonians 2:4 uses it in the sense of proclamation to high office. All those shades of meaning are applicable to
Jesus. He was exhibited as God in human
flesh, and that was confirmed by ‘many convincing proofs’ (Acts 1:3). Finally, God ‘highly exalted Him, and
bestowed on Him the name which is above every name’ (Phil. 2). There is no higher office that that of
Messiah, God’s anointed King.”
Peter goes on to describe the means that God “attested”
Jesus: “miracles and wonders and signs.” There are two things that critics of the
Bible cannot deal with and therefore try to explain them away. Miracles are the first one and prophecies are
the second one. John writes at the end
of his gospel that if all that Jesus did would be recorded in books that there
would not be enough paper to write it on.
Now I do believe John uses hyperbole when writing this, but the fact
remains that not all of the miracles that Jesus did were recorded and we have
many, many miracles that were recorded in the Word of God. The people of His day could not deny the
miracles that He did. Now as far as
prophecy I have said in an earlier SD that it is said that the odds of all of
the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled at His first coming were like spreading
silver dollars six feet high throughout the entire state of Texas and asking
someone to find on particular silver dollar. Not going to happen for sure.
John MacArthur writes “It should come as no surprise if
the God Who supernaturally created the universe should choose at times to supernaturally
intervene in it. Yet it is the claim of
miracles that many in our culture find most objectionable in biblical
Christianity. The many attempts by
rationalistic critics to invent the ‘historical’ (that is, nonmiraculous) Jesus
have inevitably ended in frustration. If
the miracles are removed from His life, there is very little left.
“Many would agree with the eighteenth-century British
philosopher David Hume, who rejected the possibility of miracles. Hume argued that since the laws of nature are
uniform, and a miracle is by definition a violation of the laws of nature,
miracles are impossible. There is a
fatal flaw in Hume’s argument, however.
C. S. Lewis writes,
‘Now of course we must agree
with Hume that if there is absolutely ‘uniform experience’ against miracles, if
in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately we know the experience against
them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we can know all the reports to be false
only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.’”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I happen to know
of a miracle that happened to me on the 26th of January, 1974 and
that miracle was the miracle of the new birth.
God is still doing miracles each and every day as His Spirit calls
spiritually dead people to become alive in Christ Jesus.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust that the Lord will use me to tell
others about the great miracle of salvation as He leads people onto my path so
I can talk to them.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “His glorious body”
(Philippians 3:21).
Today’s Bible
question: “At the time of Jesus’ birth
who was the king of Juda?”
Answer in our next SD.
7/24/2017 9:23 AM
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