SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/5/2025 7:38 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Teacher”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Timothy 2:2
Message of the
verse: “The
things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men
who will be able to teach others also.”
I mentioned in my last SD that today I would begin this SD by first of all writing about John’s gospel. John ends his gospel by stating that “there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books which were written” (John 21:25). I have to say that I have always been amazed by that verse. Now we know that Luke was not an apostle but was a close associate of apostles, so that much of what we know of the Lord’s earthly ministry and the apostles’ ministry in the early church were know from the gospel and the books of Acts which through the Spirit of God were written by Luke. Here is how he begins the gospel of Luke “1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,” MacArthur writes “Like John, he reposts that what is recorded accounts only for those things ‘that Jesus began to do and teach’ [emphasis added] until the Ascension. Just before He ascended, He told the awaiting disciples on the Mount of Olives, ‘You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).”
The
following is what happened after these events in Acts 1:8, and the first thing
that happened was the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ back to heaven. After that the disciples returned to the
Upper Room where they were staying, and under the Lord’s guidance, chose
Matthias to be the one to replace Judas.
This is seen in verses 21-26, and there was a time in my early walk with
the Lord that I thought that because this event happened before the Spirit of
God came upon the apostles that perhaps Peter was acting to fast in choosing
Judas’ replacement. I thought that perhaps
Paul would be the one to replace Judas.
I have to say that I have changed my mind on those thoughts. MacArthur writes “Some years later, Christ
personally and directly called Paul to the thirteenth apostle (see Acts 9:
3-20). ‘one untimely born,’ whom he
himself considered to be ‘the least of the apostles, who am not fit to be
called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God’ (1 Cor.
15:8-9). But, by God’s sovereign grace
and choice, he was as fully an apostle as the others (see, e. g., Rom. 1:1,
11:13; 1 Cor. 9:1).”
Sunday’s
mean shorter SD’s as on this very cold morning I will go to church for the
first time in three weeks because of sickness and by God’s grace will again
teach our Sunday school class.
I
just read a Spiritual Diary from 2011 on the book of Ester and one of my steps
of faith was that the Lord would not allow me to have a problem with my IBS,
something that I still deal with and something that I pray will not affect me
today either. 1/5/2025 8:02 AM
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