SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/22/2023 9:32 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: “The
Predictions of His Sufferings”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
20:18b-19a
Message of the
verses: “and
the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they
will condemn Him to death, 19 and will hand Him over to the Gentiles”
I want to begin this SD by talking about some of the
things that are in the New Testament that show that Jesus has divine
omniscience. In the 4th
chapter of John’s gospel we read that when Jesus came and was talking to the
woman at the well that He knew how many husbands the woman had. The truth is that Jesus had never met or
heard of her before (see John 4:16-18).
In the 21st chapter of Matthew Jesus told His disciples
exactly where to find the colt that He would be riding on (Matt. 21:2). In the 24th chapter of Luke Jesus
would forecast the destruction of Jerusalem nearly forty years before it would
occur (Matt. 24:1-2). In the passage that
we are to look at this morning we find that Jesus will omnisciently add details
of His suffering and death to the many prophecies of the Old Testament, and as
mentioned there are very many prophecies found in the Old Testament that speak
of His death and even His resurrection from the dead.
In the New Testament Jesus referred
to Himself or was referred to by the gospel writers some eighty times as the
Son of Man, which is an Old Testament title that connoted the Messiah’s divinity
but emphasized His incarnation and humiliation.
As the divine/human Son of Man, Jesus declared that He would be
delivered to the chief priests and scribes as seen in the last half of verse
18.
Jesus, at this time did not make
known of the one by whom He would be delivered, although it can be assured that
Jesus knew it would be Judas. MacArthur
writes “This is why some translators have chosen to render the verb as ‘betrayed,’
instead of the more literal delivered or ‘handed over.’”
In writing about the Jewish
priesthood MacArthur writes “The Jewish priesthood was composed of several
ranks and levels. The Levites were the
lowest level and numbered in the many thousands. They did not perform priestly functions as
such but were responsible for serving the priests. The ordinary priests served in various
capacities in the Tabernacle and later the Temple. By New Testament times a group had developed
called the chief priests, who were the hereditary aristocracy of the
priesthood. The highest position within
that group was that of the high priest, an office handed down from father to
son.
“Next in importance among the Jewish
religious leaders were the scribes, who gained their positions not by heredity
but by learning. They were authorities
on the Old Testament, especially the Mosaic law,
as well as on the thousands of rabbinical traditions they developed over the
past several hundred years since the return from Babylon. Scribes were often called lawyers, rabbis, or
doctors and, as is abundantly evident from the gospels, were closely associated
with the Pharisees.”
I,
for one am thankful to have a better understanding of these offices that were a
part of the Jewish religious system during the time of Christ. In learning this we can now see that the chief
priests and scribes therefore respectively comprised the hereditary and the
intellectual aristocracy of Judaism.
This group of Jewish leaders came to hate and oppose Jesus, and the
reason for the most part is that He threatened their hypocritical and ungodly
system of power. And as the executive
body of the high Jewish council, the Sanhedrin, they would soon condemn Him to
death. “11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not
receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right
to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,” (John
1:11-12).
It is known that at the time when Jesus came to
planet earth that Rome was in control of the children of Israel and it was a
policy of Rome not to allow subject nations to impose the death penalty, the
Jewish religious leaders could condemn Jesus to death but they could not
execute Him without the Roman approval.
It was because of this that it would be necessary for them to deliver
Him to the pagan Roman Gentiles in order to carry out their murderous scheme. I believe that it was when I was studying the
gospel of Mark that I learned some things about Pilate that I did not know
before, things like what happened to him after he was forced to leave
Judea. The Jews had some things on
Pilate and therefore they used blackmail in order to have him condemn Jesus to
death. “If you release this Man, you are
no friend of Caesar; everyone who makes himself out to be a king opposes Caesar”
(John 19:12).
4/22/2023 10:16 AM
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