SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/24/2018
8:19 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “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.”
This is our fourth SD from Paul’s sermon at Pisidian
Antioch, where his is speaking about the history of Israel which leads up Jesus’
fulfillment of prophecy which was prophesized about Him in the Old
Testament. I have heard the number of
prophecies that Jesus fulfilled from the Old Testament when He came to planet
earth the first time, but I can’t remember what that number was, but what I do
remember is that if the entire state of Texas was covered with silver dollars
six feet tall and a person was asked to find one particular silver dollar and
finds it that would be the odds of Christ fulfilling all of the prophecies that
He fulfilled the first time that He came to earth. Another thing we can learn from this and that
is if He fulfilled all of those prophecies that pertained to His first visit to
planet earth we have to believe that He will fulfill the prophecies that will
happen when He comes back to planet earth.
We are beginning this SD by looking at the last part of verse
29, “laid Him in a tomb.” When criminals
were crucified during the time when Christ was crucified they were many times
thrown into a mass grave, but not Christ because it was prophesied that He
would be buried in the tomb of a rich man, which is what happened. “9 His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor
was there any deceit in His mouth (Isa. 53:9).”
John MacArthur writes “In verse 30 Paul comes to the
climactic truth of his sermon when he sounds the keynote of apostolic preaching
by declaring that ‘God raised’ Jesus ‘from the dead’ (cf. Acts 2:24, 32; 3:15;
4:10; 5:30; 10:40). Of all the proofs
that Jesus is the Messiah, that is the greatest. As Paul was later to write in Romans 1:4,
Jesus ‘was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the
dead.’”
Next Paul will site evidence to the fact that Jesus did
rise 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. “ According to 1 Corinthians 15:6 which is commonly
known as the resurrection we see that there were more than 500 witnesses who
saw Christ after he arose from the dead.
The apostle Paul is also a saw the resurrected Christ which is one of
the qualifications of being an apostle. Josh
McDowell wrote two books, “Evidence that Demands a Verdict,” and then “More
Evidence that Demands a Verdict” that gives as the title suggests evidence that
Christ arose from the dead which is the heart of the Gospel message. My wife and I just watched a move about the
life of a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, Lee Strobel, who months after his
wife became a believer came to Christ after doing a thorough investigation about
who Christ is. He now goes around
talking to audiences of this truth. Wikipedia
states of Strobel “Strobel states he was an atheist when he began investigating the Biblical claims about
Christ after
his wife's conversion. Prompted by the results of his investigation, he became
a Christian
on November 8, 1981.”
We will conclude this SD, with one
more to go, by quoting again from MacArthur’s commentary: “Paul concludes this section on the
resurrection by showing that by it ‘the good news of the promise’ God ‘made to
the fathers has’ been ‘fulfilled. In
verses 33-37, Paul lists three of those promises.” We will conclude this section in our next SD
by looking at verses 33-37.
My Steps of Faith
for Today:
I am trusting that the Lord, in His will, will bring more people to our
Sunday school class tomorrow to hear about what John wrote in Revelation
chapter four.
Answer
to yesterday’s Bible question: “Samson”
(Judges 14:18).
Today’s
Bible question: “According to the
prophet Zechariah, where will Jesus’ feet stand when He returns to the earth?”
Answer
in our next SD.
2/24/2018
8:54 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment