Friday, August 23, 2024

PT-3 "Intro to Matt. 27:45-53"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/23/2024 9:01 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                               Focus:  PT-3 “Intro to Matt. 27:45-53”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                              Reference:  Matthew 27:45-53

 

            Message of the verses:  45  Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. 46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?" that is, "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?" 47 And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, "This man is calling for Elijah." 48 Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink. 49 But the rest of them said, "Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him." 50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. 51 And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.”

 

            It is my desire to complete this section and I will do it by quoting what John MacArthur wrote in his introduction for these verses.

 

            “Immediately after the Fall, God gave the first veiled promise of deliverance from the sin that had cursed mankind and the rest of the world.  He told Satan, ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel’ (Gen. 3:15).  Because men not women carry the seed of procreation, the seed of Eve was a prediction of the virgin birth of Christ, who have no human father and would be bruised temporarily ‘on the heel’ by Satan but would bruise Satan permanently ‘on the head.’

 

            When God provided the ram as a substitute for Isaac, whom He had ordered his father, Abraham, to sacrifice (Gen. 22:1-14), He provided a beautiful picture of a sacrificial offering on His own Son, Jesus Christ—except that for Him no substitute was or could be provided.  And through the animal sacrifices prescribed in the law of Moses, God portrayed to His people the necessity of shedding blood for the remission of sin.  But the blood of those animals had no power to remove the slightest sin, and the sacrifices had to be repeated continuously through the history of Israel.  Yet imperfect as they were, they nevertheless pictured the true, sufficient, and once-for-all sacrifice for sins that Christ’s blood shed on the cross would provide.  Only one of the 30,000 crucified died for the sins of the world!

 

            “Isaiah graphically predicted that the coming Messiah would be ‘pierced through for our transgressions…crushed for our iniquities, carrying in His own body the sins of all fallen mankind (Isa. 53:5).  Zechariah predicted that one day God’s chosen people will turn as a nation to the One whom they had pierced, ‘and they will morn for Him, as one mourns for an only son’ (Zech. 12:10).

 

            In the New Testament Paul explains that on the cross Christ was made a curse for us who deserve to be cursed (Gal. 3:13).  Peter declares that He died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit’ (1 Pet. 3:18; cf. Heb. 9:28), and John speaks of Christ  as the supreme sacrificial ‘Lamb who has been slain’ (Rev. 13:8).

 

            “But nowhere in Scripture is the meaning of the cross delineated more powerfully than in Matthew 27:45-53, which records six miracles that form Almighty God’s own commentary on the meaning of the cross.”

 

            This six miracles are what we will begin to look at beginning with “Supernatural Darkness” in our next SD, Lord willing.

 

8/23/2024 9:21 AM

 

No comments:

Post a Comment