SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/26/2024 7:45 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “The
Animosity of the Crowd”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
27:15-23
Message of the verses: “15 Now at the
feast the governor was accustomed to release for the people any one
prisoner whom they wanted. 16 At that time they were holding a notorious
prisoner, called Barabbas. 17 So when the people gathered together, Pilate said
to them, "Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas, or Jesus who
is called Christ?" 18 For he knew that because of envy they had handed Him
over. 19 While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent him a
message, saying, "Have nothing to do with that righteous Man; for last
night I suffered greatly in a dream because of Him." 20 But the chief
priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to put
Jesus to death. 21 But the governor said to them, "Which of the two do you
want me to release for you?" And they said, "Barabbas." 22 Pilate
said to them, "Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?"
They all said, "Crucify Him!" 23 And he said, "Why, what evil
has He done?" But they kept shouting all the more, saying, "Crucify Him!"
As
I begin to study this passage there are a few things on my mind, and the first
one is that all of this was planned by God in order for His Son to die on the
cross for the sins of the world. The
second thing I think about is that how a crowd can influence a verdict for
someone on trial. I have mentioned that
our former President has been on trial for a number of false accusations that
were brought against him and it reminds me of some of these sham trials that
our Lord had to go through. Crowd influence
is not always right. I read a story in
my preparation to teaching our Sunday school class on Colossians this fall, and
in the story Warren Wiersbe talked about a man in England who had killed his
wife and was found guilty of t he crime and was sentenced to death. William Booth, the man who began the
Salvation Army was asked to take care of this man’s funeral. The crowd at the funeral was very hostile as
Booth began his words at the funeral.
Wiersbe writes “Booth faced as ugly and mean a crowd as he had ever seen
in his life, but his first words stopped them and held them: “John H. Starkey never had a praying mother.” These words settled the crowd down and Booth
then had control to finish his words at this funeral.
The
crowd at Jesus’s trail was also hostile as the Jewish leaders got them all in a
frenzy as they smelled blood, the blood of the Creator of the Universe who had
stepped down onto the world He had created and was willing to die for those who
live on this earth, was willing to take the almighty wrath of His Father for
three hours of darkness as He became sin for us, so that we can accept what He
did for us as He hung on the cross enduring a kind of pain and suffering that
would pay for every sin every person would commit who ever lived on planet
earth. We don’t know what those three
hours were truly about with the exception that once they were over and Christ
was about to give up His life that He had paid for my sins and for yours and
what is needed now is for a person to realize that they were born a sinner
because of Adam’s sin and that we sin because of being born a sinner, and there
is nothing on our own that we can do with the exception of admitting your sin
to the Lord and then ask Him into your life in order to save you, and I will
tell you from my experience some fifty plus years ago that He will and you will
then be a born-again believer, have a new heart, have the Holy Spirit living in
you and will one day come face to face with Jesus Christ your Savior and your
Lord.
I
guess that tomorrow we will begin looking at these verses from Matthew 27.
7/26/2024 8:09 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment