EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/13/2025 8:29 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “Intro
to 1 John 4:7-21”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 4:7-21
Message of the verses: “7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God;
and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not
love does not know God, for God is love. 9 By this the love of God was
manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so
that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but
that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has
seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is
perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because
He has given us of His Spirit. 14 We have seen and testify that the Father has
sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that
Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 We have come to
know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one
who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.17 By this, love is
perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment;
because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love;
but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected
in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us. 20 If someone says,
"I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who
does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not
seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God
should love his brother also.”
I have to begin by saying that this is unusual for
John MacArthur to look as so many verses at one time. I think that when he was going over this
section that it took more than one sermon.
I will once again probably use a lot of his quotes to go over his
introduction which is lengthy, but not as lengthy as some of his
introductions. Once again I remind you
that John MacArthur was recently released from the hospital after having a
great deal of problems with his heart, and so please keep him in your prayers.
“The
Trinity is an unfathomable and yet unmistakable doctrine in Scripture. As Jonathan Edwards noted after studying the topic
extensively, ‘I think [the doctrine of the Trinity] to be the highest and
deepest of all Divine mysteries still, notwithstanding anything that I have
said or conceived about it’ (An
Unpublished Treatise on the Trinity).
Yet, though the fullness of the Trinity is far beyond human
comprehension, it is unquestionably how God has revealed Himself in Scripture—as
one God eternally existing in three persons.”
I have to say that I knew little about the Trinity before I became a
believer, I knew it existed, but after I became a believer it took me a while
to be taught by God that His Son was a part of the Trinity, the One who came to
earth being born of a virgin so that the sin nature was in no way passed on to
Him, and so He was both God and Man who would go to the cross in order to pay
for my sins so that I could then become a child of God. I have to totally agree with what Jonathan
Edwards says, as he was one of the truly great preachers in our country before
it became a nation, and God used him to bring about a great revival, one of the
greatest revivals our country has ever seen.
If he did not understand the trinity, then I certainly can’t but like
him I believe that God exists in three persons, but is only one God.
“This
is not to suggest, of course, that the Bible presents three different gods (cf.
Deut. 6:4).” “"Hear, O Israel! The
LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” “Rather
God is three persons in one essence; the Divine essence subsists wholly and
indivisibly, simultaneously and eternally, in the three members of the one
Godhead—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
“The
Scriptures are clear that these three persons together are one and only one God
(Deu. 6:4). John 10:30 and 33 explain that the Father and the Son are one. First Corinthians 3:16 shows that the Father
and the Spirit are one. Romans 8:9 makes
clear that the Son and the Spirit are one.
And John 14:16, 18, and 23 demonstrate that the Father, Son, and Spirit
are one.” I will just quote the verses
from the gospel of John listed above.
“16 “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another
Helper, that He may be with you forever.”
“18 "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” “23 Jesus answered and said to him, "If
anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will
come to him and make Our abode with him.”
“Yet, in exhibiting the unity between the members of
the Trinity, the Word of God in no way denies the simultaneous existence and
distinctiveness of each of the three persons of the Godhead. In other words, the Bible makes it clear that
God is one God (not three), but that the one God is a Trinity of persons.
“In
the Old Testament, the Bible implies the idea of the Trinity in several
ways. The title Elohim (‘God’), for instance, is a plural noun, which can suggest multiplicity
(cf. Gen. 1:26). This corresponds to the
fact that the plural pronoun (‘us’) is sometimes used of God (Gen. 1:26; Isa.
6:8). More directly, there are places in
which God’s name is applied to more than one person in the same text (Ps. 110:1;
cf. Gen. 19:24). And there are also
passages where all three divine persons are seen at work (Isa. 48:16; 61:1).
I
will conclude this SD with one more quotation from MacArthur’s commentary.
“The
New Testament builds significantly on these truths, revealing them more explicitly. The baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19
designates all three persons of the Trinity.
‘God therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ In his apostolic benediction to the Corinthians,
Paul underscored this same reality. He
wrote, ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God [the Father],
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all’ (2 Cor. 13:14). Other New Testament passages also spell out
the glorious truth of the triune God (Rom. 15:16, 30); 2 Cor. 1:21-22; Eph.
2:18).”
2/13/2025 9:10 PM
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