SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/11/2024 8:03 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Intro to Matthew 27:57-66”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
27:57-66
Message of the verses: “57 When it was evening,
there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become
a disciple of Jesus. 58 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of
Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. 59 And Joseph took the
body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, 60 and laid it in his own new tomb,
which he had hewn out in the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the
entrance of the tomb and went away. 61 And Mary Magdalene was there, and the
other Mary, sitting opposite the grave. 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 continue with John MacArthur’s introduction to
these verses: “The Apostle Paul
summarized all those truths in the simple statement that God ‘works all things
after the counsel of His will (Eph. 1:11).
(This paragraph will make much more sense if you read the previous SD.)
“It is, of course, far beyond human ability to fathom
how the infinite, eternal mind of God is able to execute the greatest as easily
as the least thing He devises. In order
to have even a small grasp of that great truth it is necessary to understand
that God rules this world through two interrelated means: miracles and
providence.
“In
order to accomplish His purposes, God sometimes super naturally interrupts the
natural processes that He Himself has ordained and ordered. In doing so, He overrules what we commonly
call natural law, thereby accomplishing what is scientifically
inexplicable. Such divine interruption
is called miracle.
Creation itself was the first great interruption of the
natural status quo, when in six days God created the universe from nothing, ex
nihilo. The flood of Noah’s day was a
worldwide, supernatural disruption of virtually every natural process. The plagues of Egypt and the death of the
first born were a local, but no lsee supernatural, intervention in the course
of nature, as were the parting of the Red Sea and the provision of manna in the
wilderness. The Lord supernaturally
caused the sun to stand still for Joshua and caused the walls of Jericho to
fall without any mechanical means. He
caused the ground to swallow Korah and his rebellious followers and
miraculously provided Samson with extraordinary physical strength, by which
among others things, he singlehandedly killed 1,000 men (Jud. 15:15-16).
“God
made an ax head float, a donkey speak, a chariot of fire carry Elijah to heaven
without dying, the mouths of hungry lions to be shut, and a great fish to
swallow Jonah and carry him in his belly for three days without harm to the prophet.
“The
second supernatural way in which God executes His will is through divine
providence. Like Trinity, the term providence
is not found in Scripture, although the reality of it is explicit or implicit
on every page. Providence refers to God’s
independent superintendency of the universe through the operation of normal and
natural processes and happenings.
Through His sovereign providence, God is able to take the virtually
infinite number of events and circumstances, as well as the innumerable
personal attitudes, ambitions, and abilities that exist in the natural and
demonic worlds and cause them all to work together in meticulous precision to
perfectly fulfill His divine will.
“Through
miracle, God interrupts and overrules the operation of normal and natural
processes and events, whereas through providence predetermined will. From a human perspective, therefore,
providence seems even more astounding than miracle. In miracle, God ‘simply’ replaces natural
events and circumstances with those of His own special making, usually within a
short period of time and often instantaneously.
Providence, however, involves the infinitely more complex task of taking
natural events and circumstances, as well as the limited but real periods of
time, superintending all of those elements in the flawless fulfillment of His
own foreordained plans. Multiplied
myriads of individual and seemingly random plans, choices, actions, and events
continually work together in a divinely synchronized strategy to perform God’s
predestined plan.
“Throughout
Scripture, God is shown to control the thunder and the lightning, the rain and
the snow, the rivers and the mountains, the heat and the cold, the animals and
the birds, the cities and the nations, the newborn and the dying, the healthy
and the sick, the poor and the rich, the weak and the strong, the simple and
the complex, the ruler and the ruled, the human and the demonic, and the
natural and the supernatural in sovereign freedom.
“Joseph
was one of the twelve brothers born to Jacob in fulfillment of God’s covenant
promise to Abraham. Because of the
jealous hatred of his brothers, Joseph was sold into slavery, taken to Egypt,
falsely accused of seducing his employer’s wife, thrown into prison, and
divinely enabled to interpret dreams for a fellow prisoner and then for the pharaoh. Joseph was eventually elevated to rulership
second only to pharaoh himself and because of that high position was able to
rescue his own family from famine and was marvelously reunited with them. Without the use of a single miracle, God
sovereignly, by providence, directed every moment of Joseph’s life and the
lives of those around him. Realizing
that profound truth, Joseph was able to say to his repentant brothers, ‘As for
you, you meant evil against me, but God
meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many
people alive’ (Gen. 50:20; cf. 45:45).”
Lord
willing I want to complete this very interesting introduction to these verse
from Matthew 27:57-66 in the next SD.
9/12/2024 8:39 AM
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