SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/23/2018
8:41 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-3 “Jesus: The Fulfillment of Prophecy”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts
13:23-37
Message of the
verses: “23 "From the descendants of this man,
according to promise, God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, 24 after John had proclaimed before His coming a
baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. 25 “And while John was
completing his course, he kept saying, ’What do you suppose that I am? I am not
He. But behold, one is coming after me the sandals of whose feet I am not
worthy to untie.’ 26 “Brethren, sons of Abraham’s family, and those among you
who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent. 27 “For those
who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, recognizing neither Him nor the
utterances of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by
condemning Him. 28 “And though they found no ground for putting Him to death,
they asked Pilate that He be executed. 29 “When they had carried out all that
was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a
tomb. 30 “But God raised Him from the dead; 31 and for many days He appeared to
those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now
His witnesses to the people. 32
"And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the
fathers, 33 that God has fulfilled this
promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in
the second Psalm, ’YOU ARE MY SON; TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.’ 34 “As for the
fact that He raised Him up from the dead, no longer to return to decay, He has
spoken in this way: ’I WILL GIVE YOU THE HOLY and SURE blessings OF DAVID.’ 35
“Therefore He also says in another Psalm, ’YOU WILL NOT ALLOW YOUR HOLY ONE TO
UNDERGO DECAY.’ 36 "For David,
after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and
was laid among his fathers and underwent decay; 37 but He whom God raised did not undergo decay.”
I want to begin with one more thing about John the
Baptist and that is that according to Acts 19:1-3 John’s ministry was well
known to Paul’s hearers. “1 It happened
that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and
came to Ephesus, and found some disciples. 2 He said to them, "Did you
receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" And they said to him,
"No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit." 3 And he
said, "Into what then were you baptized?" And they said, "Into
John’s baptism.’”
Verse 26, “26 “Brethren, sons of Abraham’s family, and
those among you who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been
sent,” is an important dividing line in Paul’s sermon as he readdresses the two
groups in the audience as brethren as seen in verse 26. The two groups are the Jews and the Gentiles
who fear God.
Now as we go through Paul’s writings we see that he has
his own style, and part of that style is that Paul will anticipate and then
answer questions that may have been going through the minds of his
listeners. This is especially seen in
the books of Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians.
The first question is a question that Jewish people have
wrestled with from the time of the apostles until now and that is whether or
not Jesus is the Messiah. If Jesus is
the Messiah, then why did the Jewish leaders not recognize Him as their Messiah? We can conclude that Paul was listening to
the sermon that Stephen gave as he gives the same answer and that is because of
the hardness of their hearts. Paul
explains that “those who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, recognizing neither
Him nor the utterances of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled
these by condemning Him.” Paul is saying
that the Jewish leaders read the very Scriptures that they would fulfill
because they did not understanding what they were reading, and the reason they
did not understand what they were reading was that their hearts were hard. I have heard it explained that when
unbelievers read the Bible it is as if they are trying to read a book in
another language, thus they cannot understand it. The Holy Spirit, the Author of Scripture is
the One who opens the hearts of believers to understand His Word, and He will
open the hearts of unbelievers when they are coming to know the Lord after He
gives them an effective call.
The second question that Paul answers is if the Messiah
was rejected, does that nullify God’s plan?
Paul replied far from it. John
MacArthur writes “Isaiah 53:3 foresaw that Messiah would be ‘despised and
forsaken of men.’ (“3 He was despised
and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one
from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”) They hated Jesus without cause, so that even ‘though
they found no ground for putting Him to death, they asked Pilate that He be
executed.’ They thus unwittingly
fulfilled Psalm 69:4, ‘Those who hate me without a cause are more than the
hairs of my head’ (cf. John 15:25).”
David wrote Psalm 22, and in this Psalm we can see what
crucifixion was about many years before it was used. What we read in this Psalm shows what Christ
was going through as He hung on the cross, and the Jewish leaders had absolutely
no problem doing this to Jesus because of their hatred for Him. Paul talks of the aftermath of this in verse
29: “29 “When they had carried out all
that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross and laid Him
in a tomb.” Jesus life that is recorded
in the Scriptures was the fulfillment of prophecy as everything that He did
while on earth was the plan of God for Him to do. You may remember when He was 12 years old and
seemingly lost according to His parents.
When they found Him in the temple He stated that He was about His Father’s
business. In John’s gospel we read at
the end of His crucifixion just before He died He stated “It is finished.” Jesus had finished His Father’s work for Him
to do as those words actually mean “paid in full,” and Jesus paid in full for
our sins. Don’t be like the Jewish leaders
who crucified Jesus, but accept the payment that He made for you realizing that
is the only way that you will have forgiveness four your sins and be
born-again.
We will continue looking at this portion of Paul’s sermon
in our next SD. I said as we began this
section that it would take us a while to get through it, but remember as we
look at this we are listening to the preaching of the Apostle Paul.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: To think that
Jesus would come to earth and die for me is more than I can understand, but I
am thankful that the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to understand this truth.
My Steps of Faith for Today: As I continue studying for my Sunday school
lesson, my prayer is that the Lord will increase our numbers and that people
will understand what this great book of Revelation teaches.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “I am come that they might
have life; and have it more abundantly.”
Today’s Bible
question: “Who said, ‘If you had not
plowed with my heifer, you had not found out my riddle’?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/23/2018 9:25 AM
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