SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/6/2024 9:08 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “The Ignorant Wicked”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
27:27-37
Message of the verses: “27 Then the
soldiers of the governor
took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole Roman cohort around Him. 28 They
stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. 29 And after twisting together a
crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they
knelt down before Him and mocked Him, saying, "Hail, King of the
Jews!" 30 They spat on Him, and took the reed and began to beat Him
on the head. 31 After they had mocked Him, they took the scarlet robe
off Him and put His own garments back on Him, and led Him away to crucify Him.
“32 As
they were coming out, they found a man of Cyrene named Simon, whom they pressed
into service to bear His cross.
“33 And when they came to a place called
Golgotha, which means Place of a Skull, 34 they gave Him wine to drink mixed
with gall; and after tasting it, He was unwilling to drink. 35 And when
they had crucified Him, they divided up His garments among themselves by
casting lots. 36 And sitting down, they began to keep watch over Him
there. 37 And above His head they put up the charge against Him which read,
"THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.’”
Whenever I get to passages like this in my study of
the Word of God, and I look at John MacArthur’s commentary on this very long
section I make the decision to just for the most part quote from his
commentary, and the reason is that it is my desire to learn from these verses,
and it is my desire for those who read these Spiritual Diaries to also learn
from them. My God receive the glory for
what He will do with these Spiritual Diaries!!
We
pick up beginning with the following quotation from MacArthur’s
commentary: “Through all of that torment
and pain Jesus said nothing either in defense or in reproach. He had predicted His mocking, His suffering
and His crucifixion long before Pilate or his soldiers knew who He was (Matt.
16:21; 20:18-19). That was God’s plan
countless ages before it was the plan of wicked men, and it was for that very
purpose that He had come to earth. As
men fulfilled their evil and destructive design, God fulfilled His gracious and
redemptive design. Christ was on the
divine schedule, which even His enemies were unwittingly fulfilling in minute
detail.
“We
learned from John that during this time Pilate brought Jesus out before the
Jews, asserting again that he found no fault in Him. Jesus stood again on the porch of the
Praetorium, ‘wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them ‘Behold, the Man!’’(John
19:4-5). Although he had agreed to the
crucifixion and had permitted Jesus to be brutally beaten and mocked, the
governor obviously still hoped, perhaps due to his wife’s warning, that Jesus’
life could be s pared. But ‘when the
chief priests and the officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, ‘Crucify,
crucify!’’ As if to wash his hands of the whole unjust affair again, ‘Pilate
said to them, ‘Take Him yourselves, and crucify Him, for I find no guilt in
Him.’ The Jews answered him, ‘We have a
law, and by that law He ought to die because He made Himself out to be the Son
of God.’ When Pilate therefore heard
this statement, he was the more afraid’ (vv. 6-8). Although they repeated only the religious
charges against Jesus, the clear implication is that the Jewish leaders were
insisting Rome’s complicity in His execution.
In effect, they refused to crucify Jesus by themselves, even with Pilate’s
permission.”
Buckle
up for we still have six and a half more pages from MacArthur’s commentary to
look at.
“Taking
Jesus back into the Praetorium, Pilate asked Him where He was from bur received
no answer. When he told Jesus that he
had power of life and death over Him, the Lord responded, ‘You would have no authority
over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who
delivered Me up to you has the greater sin’ (John 19:10-11). Although he had little comprehension of what
Jesus meant, Pilate was convinced all the more of His innocence of any civil
crime and once again ‘made efforts to release Him, but the Jews cried out,
saying, ‘If you release this Man, you are no friend of Caesar’’ v. 12).
“Still holding out against them, Pilate brought
Jesus to ‘the judgment seat at a place called The Pavement, but in Hebrew;
Gabbatha,’ and mockingly said, ‘Behold your King!’ Infuriated by Pilate’s
continued defiance of them, the Jewish leaders ‘cried out, ‘Away with Him, away
with Him, crucify Him!’’ In one last
taunt, Pilate asked, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ to which the chief priests hypocritically
replied, ‘We have no king but Caesar.’ Frustrated
and exhausted, Pilate resigned himself to the injustice and ‘delivered Him to
them to be crucified’ (John 19:13-16).
“As
representatives of the people, the chief priests here pronounced the
culminating apostasy of Israel.
Rejecting God’s Son, they publicly, although insincerely, declared
allegiance to the pagan emperor.” I want you to think about this highlighted section
for a moment, for in what the Jewish leaders did caused the next 2015 years of
awfulness for the Jewish people. This
actually began in 70 A. D. so it was actually 1878 years of wanderings from
country to country for the Jewish people and only ended soon after over six
million Jews were killed in WWII, and then the United Nations voted to give
Israel a small piece of land which was actually what the Lord gave to them
thousands of years before. I guess that
one of the morals of this story is you must watch out what you say.
MacArthur
continues “Picking up the account at this point, Matthew reports that after
they had mocked Him further, they took His robe off and put His garments on
Him, and led Him away to crucify Him.” This
is where we will end today’s SD.
8/6/2024 11:51 AM
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