SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/24/2024 9:47 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Chief Priests and Pharisees”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
27:62-65
Message of the verses: “62 Now on the next day, the day after the preparation, the
chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate, 63 and said,
"Sir, we remember that when He was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After
three days I am to rise again.’ 64 "Therefore, give orders for the
grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise His disciples may come
and steal Him away and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the
last deception will be worse than the first." 65 Pilate said to them, "You
have a guard; go, make it as secure as you know how." 66 And they
went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the
stone.”
I want to continue to look at these verses as I
begin this second SD discussing them. We
have learned in the last Spiritual Diaries that Jesus is now dead, however the
chief priests and the Pharisees want to make sure that Jesus will not rise from
the dead like He said that He would.
They now come to Pilate and say to him:
“"Sir, we remember that when He was still alive that deceiver said,
‘After three days I am to rise again.’ 64 "Therefore, give orders
for the grave to be made secure until the third day.” I have to say that those of us who are
believers have no trouble in thinking that Jesus Christ has risen from the
dead, but since this has not happened in the way that Jesus rose from the dead
it is understandable to think that if a person is really not a believer that
they would have a hard time, even now, believing that He did indeed rise from
the dead. I really have a lot of problems
with the “religious” leaders during the time when Jesus was on this earth, as
even when Jesus was alive they would call him things that are not good, and now
that He is dead they still will not even use His name, but call him a deceiver.
Now perhaps you may remember the following verses
from Matthew 12:38-40: “38 Then some of
the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, "Teacher, we want to see a sign
from You." 39 But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous
generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but
the sign of Jonah the prophet; 40 for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE
NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so will the Son of Man be three days
and three nights in the heart of the earth.” This sign from the prophet Jonah was about to
happened, and I am not sure if these Pharisees and other “religious” leaders
remember this but nonetheless it will happen and nothing that they do will be
able to stop it. Remember that Jonah
came out alive after being in the great fish for three days and nights, the
Pharisees rightly understood that Jesus was claiming He would be buried in the
earth and arise alive after that same time period.
John
MacArthur writes “T he disciples had not taken Jesus literally then or when, or
numerous other occasions, He had told them privately about His suffering,
death, and resurrection (Matt. 16:21; 17:23; 20:19). The religious leaders did not believe Jesus
either, but they took His prediction seriously, thinking He would try to pull
off a hoax to make the people think He actually died and was resurrected. Now that He was dead, they were afraid His
disciples would try to perpetrate a similar hoax.
“The
expression ‘three days and three nights’ that Jesus had used in the prediction
of His burial (Matt. 12:40) did not refer necessarily to three full twenty-four
days. ‘A day and a night’ was a Jewish
colloquialism that could refer to any part of a day.”
I
remember studying this a long while ago and some have said that Jesus had to be
crucified on a Wednesday in order for this to be fulfilled, and some say it had
to be on a Thursday for this to be fulfilled, and as MacArthur writes His death
would take place on a Friday and that He would be raised up on Sunday. I have come to the conclusion that the truth
is that Jesus died and three days later He was raised from the dead, and I don’t
want to think about which day He died, but I know that He was raised from the
dead on Sunday and that He is now in heaven interceding for me as one of His
children, and for that I am very thankful, thankful each and every day of my
life.
MacArthur
gives more info about these “three days.”
“When Queen Ester instructed Mordecai to tell the Jews to fast ‘for
three days’ (Ester 4:16), it becomes obvious that she did not have in mind
three full days. It was ‘on the third
day’ at the end of the fast, that she ‘put on her royal robes and stood in the
inner court of the king’s palace’ to intercede for her people (5:1).”
MacArthur
goes on “The Talmud, the major Jewish commentary on Scripture and tradition,
specifies that ‘a day and a night makes one onah,
and a part of an onah is as the
whole.’
“In
the same way, people today speak of visiting a certain place for three days,
without necessarily meaning three full twenty-four hour periods. To arrive on a Monday morning, for example,
and leave on the following Wednesday afternoon is generally considered a
three-day visit.
“That
Jesus had in mind only a part of the first and third days is made clear by the
numerous references to His rising on the third day (Matt. 16:21; 17:23;
20:19). It is also clear that the Jewish
religious leaders themselves took Jesus to mean on the third day. Although they used the phrase after three
days in giving Pilate the reason for their request, they asked him to post a
guard over the tomb until the third day, indicating that they used those two
phrases synonymously.
“To
insist on a full three-day burial not only precludes Jesus’ rising on the third
day but also requires pushing the day of crucifixion back to Wednesday, in
order for Him to have been in the ground all of Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday. In that case, parts of five
consecutive days would have been involved—from Wednesday morning, when the
crucifixion would have begun, until daybreak on Sunday, which would have been
some twelve hours after that day had begun at 6:00 Pl M. the previous evening. But such an extended chronology cannot be
squared with the gospel account.
“Te
crucifixion is specifically said to have been on Friday, ‘the day before the
Sabbath’ (Mark 15:42), and the resurrection to have been sometime before dawn
on Sunday, ‘the first day of the week’ (Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1). To argue for a full three-day burial is to
presume serious, and very obvious, scriptural error.”
I
really did not want to make this that long of a Spiritual Diary but I though it
necessary for us to understand what the reasons that John MacArthur and I believe
many others say that Jesus died on Friday and then was buried and rose on
Sunday morning. I am convinced that this
is what happened and so that is something that I will not have to think about
again and just trust that Jesus died on Friday and was raised on Sunday.
9/24/2024 10:42 AM
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