SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/16/2024 8:58 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-3
“Joseph of Arimathea”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
27:57-60
Message of the verses: “And when it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given over to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away.”
I want to quote something from John MacArthur’s
commentary on this section that shows how terribly wrong they were, how much “religion”
can get in the way of true Christianity.
“Nowhere is the ungodly hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders more evident
than in their insistence that Jesus’ body be taken down before the
Sabbath. They had no compunction about
murdering the Lord of the Sabbath, yet they were meticulous in not wanting to
defile the Sabbath by having His body hanging on the cross after that day
began.
“Because the Romans would not permit a crucified man to
be taken down before he was dead, the Jewish leaders requested of Pilate that
the legs of the three men be broken to insure a quick death. In such cases a large wooden mallet was used
to shatter the legs of a victim, making it impossible for him to raise himself
in order to breathe. Although the added
pain would be excruciating, it was short-lived, because death resulted quickly
from suffocation.
“According to the eminent Bible Scholar Alfred Edersheim,
the soldiers would then administer what was called the death stroke, which
consisted of jabbing a spear into the heart (Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953], 2:612). The reason for adding the death stroke to the
crushing of the legs seems to have been to remove all doubt as to death having
occurred.”
I have to say that this kind of reporting on what
happened to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is difficult for me to even write,
and yet I have to remember that all of this was done for me, and for everyone
who ever lived if they turn from their own sins by confessing to the Lord that
they are sinners, and the word confess means to agree and so that person is to
agree with God that they are sinners, born a sinner, and continue to sin
because of that. Agree with God that, on
their own they can do nothing on their own to be saved from their sins, and
then ask the Lord to save them from their sins as they invite Him into their
hearts, which He will do. Tell the Lord
that you will live for Him the rest of your lives, thanking Him for sending the
Holy Spirit into your life to lead and to guide you and to help you understand
the Word of God as you read and study it.
1 John tells us that true believers will sin, for we all have a sin
nature, but when we sin agree with the Lord that you have sinned remembering
that once you became a believer that all of your sins have been forgiven, past,
present, and future, so when you sin you are agreeing with the Lord that you
sinned, and then thank Him for already forgiving you of that sin. As I have been studying 1 John and putting
those Spiritual Diaries onto this blog site I am learning some things that I
did not properly understand about 1 John 1:9 “If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
What I am learning is that this
verse is not only for believers but for unbelievers as all unbelievers who
become believers confessed their sins knowing that the Lord is faithful and
righteous to forgive them of their sins as He cleanses them from all
unrighteousness. That is what happens to
an unbeliever when they become a believer as they are cleansed of all their
sins, past, present, and future. Now for
believers as I have already wrote, when a believer sins they understand that
their sin is forgiven, and so when they sin they are to agree with the Lord
that what they did in sinning was wrong, and then thank Him for already
forgiving them of their sin. Now this does
not in any way, shape, or form mean that a believer can just go out and sin,
knowing that they are forgiven, for when a believer sins they realize that they
have sinned and therefore does not want to continue to do this sinful act. In listening to John MacArthur’s different
messages on this verse he stated that as he has meditated on this verse over
the last five years that he continued to learn things from it. I am thankful that he shared things that he
learned from it and as mentioned I have been writing Spiritual Dairies in the
evening on 1 John.
I will now end this SD, realizing
that I did not get very in writing about the verses from Matthew, but it is my
desire as I write these SD’s that believers will grow in their walk with the
Lord, and that the Holy Spirit will also speak to unbelievers who read these
Spiritual Diaries about their need for salvation, and that many will be saved.
9/16/2024 9:31
AM
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