SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/6/2024 8:22 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-4
“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!’”
John MacArthur brings up some things in this section
of his comments on whether or not some of the Roman soldiers who witnessed the
crucifixion of Jesus Christ and all of the miracles that took place during that
time period, miracles that I went over in earlier SD’s. With that said I will continue to quote some
of his comments from this section of Scripture.
“When Caiaphas commanded Jesus, ‘I adjure You by the
living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God’ (Matt.
26:63), he used the definite article (Greek before ‘Son.’ By saying, ‘I adjure You by the living God,’ the
high priest had already made obvious that he was talking about the true,
biblical God of the Jews, and it goes without saying that their Messiah could
only be that God’s Son, not the son of any other god. He was accusing Jesus of claiming to be the
Son of Yahweh, the creator, covenant God of Israel revealed in the Old
Testament.
“The same accusation was made by the Jews before Pilate,
except without the definite article. ‘We
have a law’ they said, ‘and by that law He outht to die because He made Himself
out to be the Son of God’ (John 19:7). If
Jesus had been claiming to be the Son of any but the true God, the Jews would
have considered Him a heretic but not a blasphemer. Not only that, but the Jews believed their
God had but one divine Son. It is completely untenable,
therefore, to take the Greek phrase huion
theou in John 19:7 to mean anything but ‘the Son of God,’ despite the fact
that it does not contain the definite article.
“The same Greek phrase (without the definite article) was
used by the angel who announced to Mary that the child born to her would ‘be
called the Son of God’ (Luke 1:35). And
after Jesus walked on the water, a similar phrase (theou huios) also without the definite article, was used by the
disciples when they confessed before Jesus, ‘You are certainly God’s Son’
(Matt. 14:33). In both of those
anarthrous (without an article) constructions the idea of the Son, rather than a Son,
is indisputable.
It is doubtless the very words that the Jewish leaders
used to accuse Jesus before Pilate (He made Himself out to be the Son of God’)
that the centurion picked up and used himself.
The great difference was that he and his fellow soldiers now believed
those words to be true. The declaration ‘Truly
this was the Son of God!’ became for them a profession of faith in Christ. I firmly believe with the noted commentator R.
C. H. Lenski that ‘this Gentle, called Longinus in tradition, came to faith
beneath the dead Savior’s cross’ (Interpretation
of St. Matthew’s Gospel [Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1961], p. 1133).
“The gracious and profound words of Jesus that they heard,
His humble, self-giving demeanor, and His complete lack of anger or
vindictiveness all worked in the hearts of the soldiers. But the only way they could have known with
such certainty that Jesus was truly the Son was through the illumination and
conviction of the Holy Spirit.
“Even after Peter had spent several years under Jesus’ instruction and had witnessed hundreds and perhaps thousands of divinity-affirming miracles, Jesus made clear to him that it was God the Father, not Peter’s human wisdom and understanding, that inspired his confession that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God (Matt. 16:16-17). Paul assured the Corinthians that ‘no one can say, Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit’ (1 Cor. 12:3).”
I will stop here and Lord will continue what
MacArthur wrote in this section in the next SD.
I have to say that when I became a believer, and although all who become
true believers in Jesus Christ are saved in the very same way, that is to
understand that you are a sinner, born a sinner, that you can do nothing on
your own to become a believer but confess that you are a sinner and ask the
Lord Jesus Christ to come into your life to save you. He will do that! Now I did not realize all of these truths for
a while after being saved, and I suppose the reason is that the circumstances
that were involved when I became a true believer in Jesus Christ were different
than when so many people who become believers are involved in a church as
someone probably drug them into church, they heard the salvation message, the
Holy Spirit convicted them the confessed Jesus as Savior and Lord and then
began to grow in their faith with the aid of the church. I did not go to church for four years after I
became a believer, but studied the Bible a lot and was with a group of
believers in a Christian book store.
After those four years I went to Moody Bible Institutes “Founders Week”
in Chicago Ill. and at that time the Lord convicted me to join Grace Baptist
Church in Westlake, Ohio. I stayed there
over 30 years until the Pastor that was called destroyed the church so I left
and went to and am still at “First Baptist Church” of Elyria, OH. This church was formed before the Civil War
began in the United States.
God certainly has been good to me in leading me to where
He wants me to serve Him, and for that I am thankful, and will always be
thankful for the salvation that was given to me because of what Christ did on
the cross, and the Spirit of God gave me an effectual call January 26, 1974
while visiting a friend in Flordia.
9/6/2024 9:03 AM
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