SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/9/2024 12:23 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Preparation of Sovereign Grace”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 26:2
Message of the verse: “2 "You know
that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be
handed over for crucifixion.’”
I have been studying the gospel of Matthew for a
little over five years and before that I studied the gospel of Mark, and then
the gospel of John, and as I studied them I learned many thing from these
writings, and one of the things that I have learned is that there were
different times in the life of Jesus Christ while on earth that people tried to
kill Him. I think the first time was
when He was in His home town of Nazareth when His former neighbors tried to
push Him off of a cliff. “For this
reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not
only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making
Himself equal with God” (John 5:18).
I was wrong about when the first time someone tried
to kill Him as that was Herod who tried to kill Him when He was very young as
seen in the gospel of Luke. I am not
going to take the time to go over all the times in the gospels when people
tried to kill Him, but what I do want to do is talk about the time when He
would be killed. Jesus Christ came to
planet earth with the purpose of dying on the cross for the sins of the world,
and those who believe this will then realize that they are in need of the
salvation that He paid for and also realize that because they are from Adam’s bloodline
that they were born sinners. Ok here is
the way that the Bible says is the way of salvation, and that is to realize
that you are born a sinner, and to believe that on your own you can do nothing
about it, and then realize that Jesus paid it all and ask Him to come into your
life and save you, and then you will become what the Bible says is a born-again
believer.
Now back to when Jesus would die for the
sins of the world as that is what this devotion is about. Think about this fact, and it has to do with
the total eclipse of the sun that took place yesterday which I saw in my back
yard as the moon went in front of the sun and all of a sudden we had total
darkness for a little over three minutes and then the sun began to appear and
all was back to normal. My son has been
planning for this even for a year to be able to see it. The man on the radio said that the next total
solar eclipse in our area, near Cleveland, Ohio will be in a little over 400
years from now. Think about these two
verses from Colossians 1:16 For by Him all things were created, both in
the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities — all things have been created through Him
and for Him. 17 He is before all things,
and in Him all things hold together.” Jesus
created all things and He holds all things together and because of this we knew
that this eclipse was going to happen and we know when the next one will happen
and so on. Because of this Jesus knew
exactly when He was going to die on the cross for the sins of the world. John MacArthur writes “The appropriate time
for Jesus to die was at Passover, when the sacrificial lambs were slain,
because that celebration pointed to ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of
the world!’ (John 1:29).” The sacrifices
of all the other lambs were but faint symbols of what the true Lamb was soon to
accomplish in reality.
“As
Philip explained to the Ethiopia, Jesus was the Lamb predicted by Isaiah, led
to slaughter but not opening His mouth (Acts 8:32-34). As Paul declared to the Corinthian believers,
Jesus was ‘Christ our Passover [who] also has been sacrificed’ (1 Cor.
5:7). As Peter proclaimed to the scattered
and persecuted saints of the first-century church, Jesus was the unblemished
Lamb ‘foreknown before the foundation of the world, but [who] has appeared in
these last times for the sake of you’ (1 Pet. 1:19-20). As John saw on Patmos, Jesus was ‘the Lamb that
was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory
and blessing’ (Rev. 5:12).”
Lord willing we will be looking at verses 3-5 in our
next SD.
4/9/2024 12:50 PM
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