SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/21/2022 11:21 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Conformed to God’s Plan”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
12:15-17
Message of the verses: “15 But Jesus,
aware of this, withdrew from there. And many followed Him, and He healed them all, 16
and warned them not to make Him known, 17 in order that what was spoken through Isaiah
the prophet, might be fulfilled, saying.”
I
kind of find it different when we begin in the middle of a paragraph while
looking at John MacArthur’s commentary and so I will quote verse fourteen now
so that we can get a better flow of the verses:
“14 But the Pharisees went out, and counseled together against Him, as
to how they might destroy Him.” We
look at this verse in an earlier SD.
We
can see according to verse fifteen that Jesus was aware of what was going on
found in verse fourteen, and of course He knows everything that is going on all
of the time. As Jesus knew what it was
that the Pharisees were wanting to do He then moves on as seen in verse
15. In my study of John’s gospel, and
then looking at it again yesterday as I am teaching a very small Bible study
this afternoon on John 7:53-8:11. The
point is that the theme of the Gospel of John is that Jesus became a man in
order to come to earth to do His Father’s will, and that is what He will do,
and so as we look at this section we know that it was not the will of the
Father to have His Son’s crucifixion at this time. MacArthur writes “When the time came, Jesus
accepted His arrest, trial, and crucifixion without complaint or resistance—although
at any time He could easily have saved Himself and destroyed those who sought
to destroy Him. When the soldiers came
to arrest Him in the garden of Gethsemane, the fell down in awe simply at
hearing Him say, “I am He” (John 18:38).
When, a few moments later, Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of
the high priest’s slave, Jesus said, ‘Put your sword back into its place; for
all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My
Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of
angels?’ (Matt. 26:52-53).” Know for
sure that Jesus was the One who was in control of all that happened to Him
while on planet earth, including His crucifixion.
I
have mentioned that as we look at the life of our Lord while on earth that the
first part of it was very calm, compared to what the last part of it was as the
last part would involve a lot of harassment from the “Jews.” We are now beginning this second part of
Jesus ministry, the harassment part. The
first part was a continual cycle that consisted of going to a particular city
or region; or preaching, teaching, and healing; of acceptance by some and then
there was rejection by other, but not a lot of harassment. I have always thought that in the synoptic
gospels that when we come to the point of Jesus life when the Pharisees said
that He was doing His miracles in the power of Satan, (which He was really
doing them in the power of the Holy Spirit), that this was the typing point,
and this is where Jesus told them that they could not be pardoned from that sin. We will get to that part soon in the gospel
of Matthew and perhaps have more to say about it then.
Now
we see in verse 15 “Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there,” and this
shows us that Jesus was never forced away from a place of ministry but always
withdrew on His own volition. It is for
certain that if Jesus chose to use His power that He could have stayed there,
but as mentioned His life was doing what His Father planned for Him to do, and
so He withdrew.
I
will conclude this SD with a quote from MacArthur’s commentary: “The essence of Jesus’ life, His very food,
was to do His Father’s will and ‘to accomplish His work’ (John 4:34). Jesus had the true heart of a servant, and He
was submissive to His Father and wholly given to redeeming a lost world. There was never a servant like this Servant, ‘who,
although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a
thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself taking the form of a bond-servant, and
being made in the likeness of men. And
being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to
the point of death, even death on a cross’ (Phil. 2:6-8).”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I have always loved those verse from
Philippians as they tell of how great a Servant that Jesus was, and they show
me that I should be a servant too.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I want to remember that God has a plan for me
to do, and I suppose unlike Jesus whose desire was always to do His Father’s
Will, because I am a sinful man there are times when I don’t do His will, and
that makes me very sad.
I
am still trying, but doing better in getting over the death of my dog, a member
of our household for close to 16 years.
1/21/2022 11:57 AM
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