SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/19/2024 10:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “The
Religious Wicked”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
27:41-44
Message of the verses: “41 In the same way
the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking Him
and saying, 42 "He saved others; He
cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the
cross and we will believe in Him. 43 “HE TRUSTS IN GOD; LET GOD RESCUE Him
now, IF HE DELIGHTS IN HIM; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’" 44 The
robbers who had been crucified with Him were also insulting Him with the same
words. 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.’”
As I begin this SD I want to again quote a paragraph
from John MacArthur’s commentary that I used in the last SD as this speaks volumes
to me and hopefully to you.
“Jesus was not their kind of Messiah, and they had no desires to follow
Him in the way He demanded. They did not
want to be made righteous but successful.
They did not want to be cleansed but selfishly satisfied. They did not want to give up anything for God
but wanted from Him only the worldly, material advantages they cherished. When they realized Jesus offered no such
favors, they had no more use for Him.”
Now
we can move on to talk about the verses that are in this section beginning with
“He trusts in God,” as these Jewish leaders continued hypocritically; “let Him
deliver Him now, if He takes pleasure in Him.”
It seems that these leaders did not believe that Jesus truly trusted in
God but that He was an ungodly fraud.
Don’t think for a moment that they believed that God would deliver Him or
that God took pleasure in Him, and the reason is because they considered Jesus
a blasphemer. I have mentioned time and
again in my Spiritual Diaries that I love the people of Israel as I pray daily
for their struggle that they are going through, however I think Paul has some
insight onto this subject that I want to take time to find and then quote what
Paul wrote in Romans 9:6-8 “6 But it is not as
though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel;
7 nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but:
"THROUGH ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS WILL BE NAMED." 8 That is, it is not
the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the
promise are regarded as descendants.”
Now
back to my thoughts from the passage in Matthew as we continue to talk about
the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time. It
does not seem likely that they intentionally quoted Psalm 22:8, derisively
applying it to Jesus. Let us now look at
Psalm 22:8, a Psalm David wrote that speaks of what the Messiah would go
through while on the cross. "Commit
yourself to the LORD; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because
He delights in him.’” MacArthur writes “Even
to their perverse minds that would have been an irreverent treatment of
Scripture. It was rather that they
unwittingly fulfilled Scripture as they mocked Jesus, just as Judas, Caiaphas,
Pilate, and many others had unwittingly fulfilled it.”
Now
the next thing that they did was to mock Jesus’ person, throwing in His face
the many claims He had made, but which they had never believed, to bring the
Son of God. To their unbelieving and
ungodly minds, the fact that Jesus either could not or would not save Himself
was not the Messiah and God’s Son. They
were utterly blind to what Scripture taught about the Messiah’s suffering and
atoning death, and they took Jesus’ crucifixion to be final and irrefutable
proof that His claims were spurious.
This group of people at this time were those who studied the Scriptures
seemingly day and night, but look at some of the things that they missed. First they missed that Jesus was born in
Bethlehem where it was prophesied He would be born there. They missed the fact that Mary His earthly
mother was a virgin who was impregnated by the Holy Spirit of God, “And 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). Notice the words “And between
your seed and her seed.” He seed speaks of the coming Messiah. They missed what Isaiah said about Him as
being the suffering Messiah (Isa. 52:13-53:12), and as mentioned they missed
what David wrote about the Messiah in Psalm 22.
The God who wrote the Bible, which is the Person of the Holy Spirit is
the One who has to show you what He wrote in order to understand it. The Scribes and the Pharisees read the Bible
but did not understand it as they missed literally hundreds of prophecies about
Jesus first coming.
Looks
like I will try and finish this section in the next SD as there is not too much
more to look at.
8/19/2024 10:51 AM
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