Tuesday, September 3, 2024

PT-1 "Saving Faith" (Matt. 27:54)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/3/2024 8:12 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  PT-1 “Saving Faith”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                   Reference:  Matthew 27:54

 

            Message of the verse:  54 Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!’”

 

            I want to say that from the looks of what we will be covering looking at this verse that we may be camped out here for a few days, but I think that is the best way to study God’s Word.

 

            The word centurion comes from the Latin word for 100, and thus was a military officer in charge of 100 men and was therefore of a significant rank.  The centurion that we are talking about here was in charge of the crucifixion of the three men that we have been looking at for quite some time.  We read in the verse the following “who were with him keeping guard over Jesus” and so it is likely that he and the other soldiers had been in the Praetorium when He first brought there by the Jewish leaders.  It is possible that this same group of soldiers were there with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in order to arrest Jesus.  If so they have seen a lot of miracles happening.  These men had likely heard the charges brought against Jesus by those leaders and had also heard Pilate’s repeated declaration of Jesus’ innocence of any crime that was against Rome.  It is also possible that they overheard the conversation between Pilate and Jesus of His being King of the Jews.  This conversation is found in John 18:33-37),

 

            We have already looked at what happened to Jesus before He was taken to be crucified, things that the soldiers did to him, and I really don’t want to go over all of that again.

 

            MacArthur writes “If those men were religious at all, they were idolaters.  And if they were from the garrison at Pilate’s headquarters in Caesarea they probably had little knowledge of Judaism and perhaps no previous knowledge at all about Jesus.  If they knew anything of Jesus’ teachings or activities it was by hearsay.  They were at the cross simply because it was their duty to make certain the execution was carried out properly and without interference.

 

            “Because Pilate had pronounced Jesus innocent, they knew He was not threat to Rome.  But because the governor finally consented to His crucifixion, they had no choice but to carry out the command.  To those men Jesus was no more than a bizarre figure who apparently made a foolish and utterly harmless claim to be some sort of religious king.  It was obvious when they first saw Jesus that He posed no military or political threat to Rome, and it must have seemed strange to them that the Jewish leaders took Him so seriously.  When He was brought before Pilate, He had already been beaten and spit upon, and He looked anything but regal or dangerous.  He neither looked nor talked like the many insurrectionists the soldiers had seen and probably helped execute.  He not only had no band of fighting men to come to His defense but had not visible followers at all.  And because He did not even offer any self-defense, the guard may have thought Him mentally deranged.  When He eventually spoke to Pilate, He claimed to rule a kingdom that was not of this world, sounding to them like He was completely out of touch with reality.

 

            “The hatred of Jesus by the Jewish leaders and the multitude was obvious enough to the soldiers, but the reason for it was anything but obvious.  They had heard the screams of Crucify, crucify,’ but hardly have had any idea what was behind the intense bitterness.  His supposed claim to be the Son of God seemed just as ludicrous and harmless as His claim to be a king.”

 

            We will stop here and Lord willing, will pick up where we left off today in the next SD.  I have mentioned several times that there are times in MacArthur’s commentaries where he has a large amount of commentary from such short verses and it is my desire to put what he writes onto these Spiritual Diaries so those who read them around the world can read what he wrote, thus learn much about these shorter passages.

 

9/3/2024 8:39 AM

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