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
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