SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/1/2021 8:32 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Call of Judas”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 10:4b
Message of the
verse: “and
Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Him.”
In
today’s SD we begin looking at the Last Supper where Jesus said in Luke
22:21-22 “21 "But behold, the hand of the one betraying Me is with Mine on
the table. 22 “For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined;
but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!’”
John MacArthur writes “Although our finite human minds cannot understand
it, God had predetermined the betrayal, though, at the time, Judas was held
fully responsible for it, because it was by his own choice.”
Now
I want to look at another quotation, a very important one from MacArthur’s
commentary. “In Judas’s rejection of
Christ, there is the same apparent paradox of divine sovereignty and human will
that exists in the process of salvation.
Although a person must receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior with an
act of his will (John 1:12; 3:16; Rom. 1:16), every believer who does so was
chosen to be saved even before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4; cf. Acts
13:48). In the same way, Judas had the
opportunity to accept or reject Christ in regard to salvation, although Christ
planned from the beginning for the disbelief and rejection that would
characterize this disciple. Those
seemingly conflicting truths—just as others found in Scripture—are resolved
only in the mind of God. The Bible is
clear that Jesus extended to Judas the opportunity for salvation to the extent
that his unbelief was his own choice and fault (cf. Matt. 23:37; and John
5:40). Judas chose to reject and betray Christ.
That is why Christ did not label him as a victim of sovereign decree but
a ‘devil’ (John 6:70) and made clear that he did what he did not because God
made him do it but rather Satan (John 13:27).”
I believe that one thing is clear when it comes to paradoxes like these
that are found in the Word of God and that is that this proves that man did
not, nor was incapable of writing the Bible on his own.
After
this quotation from MacArthur he then goes on to talk about the successor that
took the place of Judas as found in the first chapter of the book of Acts. I have to say that there are a couple of
reasons that I wonder about the process that they took to chose the successor
of Judas. Jesus stated that they were to
wait for the Holy Spirit which came at Pentecost and this was before that time,
and then in the case of Peter he seemed to always be in a hurry, something that
I have always have had the same problem with.
The other reason was that Paul would later become an apostle as found
later on in the book of Acts. I suppose
that in the end that what we find out in Acts chapter one was truly the will of
God even though we never hear of Matthias again in the Scriptures but we have
learned that there are other apostles that we never hear about again in the
Scriptures and some of them are not even mentioned in extra Biblical accounts.
We
will close this SD and this subject of Judas’s call with words that Peter spoke
about him in his sermon that is found in the second chapter of Acts and we will
look at 2:22-23 “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 — 23 this Man, delivered over by the
predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands
of godless men and put Him to death.”
The point that we want to look at from these two verses is again a
similar point or paradox that we just looked at about Judas and that is that
God sovereignly predetermined Jesus’ crucifixion, but the unbelieving Jews were
responsible for sending Him to the cross as it was God’s predetermined will to
send His Son to die, and it was rebellious man’s determined will to put Him to
death.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I cannot understand these things that I have
been writing about, but I can trust the Lord who worked all of them out for His
glory. I don’t understand all the things
that are going on in our country, but I do trust the Lord who is allowing them
to go on and will one day bring judgment on those who are doing these things.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to be used as He wants me to
be used as I go to a men’s Bible Study this morning.
9/1/2021 9:05 AM
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