SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/24/2025 9:33 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-6
“Scripture Provides Instruction For Salvation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
2 Timothy 3:15
Message of the verse: “and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
I continue looking at the 9th chapter of John
MacArthur’s commentary on 2 Timothy. He
entitles this ninth chapter “The Work of the Word” and it covers 2 Timothy
3:15-17. He writes the following short
introduction to these verses: “No other passage in the New
Testament speaks so concisely of the nature and work of God’s Word in salvation
and sanctification. In this text, the
spiritually transforming power of divine revelation is delineated.”
Jesus
Christ states the following in John 5:37-39 “37 “And
the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me. You have neither heard His
voice at any time nor seen His form. 38 “You do not have His word abiding in
you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. 39
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them
you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.” Jesus
Himself is declaring the fact unequivocally to the unbelieving Jews who He is
and who sent Him to earth. MacArthur
adds “In other words, any Jew—or Gentile, for that matter—who had faith in God
the Father would also have faith in the Son.
In the same way, anyone who truly believed the Old Testament Scriptures
would have faith in the Son, because they ‘bear witness’ to Him. ‘For if you believed Moses,’ that is, the
five books of the Law, Jesus went on to say, you would believe Me; for he wrote
of Me’ (v. 46). ‘The Law has become our
tutor to lead us to Christ,’ Paul explains, ‘that we may be justified by faith’
(Gal. 3:24).”
Let
us now look at what Peter has to say as he used the figure of a seed to
represent Scripture, both of the Old and the New Testaments. He had just reminded believers that they had ‘been
born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is through
the living and abiding word of God,” after that He quotes from Isaiah saying
the following, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of
grass. The grass withers, and the flower
falls off, but the word of the Lord abides forever.” MacArthur adds “It was the same saving truth,
the same ‘word’ he went on to say, ‘which was preached to you’ (1 Peter
1:23-25; cf. Isa. 40:6-8).”
Next
we want to talk for a moment about Joseph and Mary who genuinely trusted in God
through His revelation in the Old Testament, they believed that even before
Jesus’ birth that the Messiah and Savior, who is the very Son of God, would be
miraculously born through Mary, and this can be seen in Matthew 1:18-25; and
also in Luke 1:26-38. It was because
they genuinely trusted in God through His revelation in the Old Testament, both
Simeon and also Anna acknowledge and trusted in Jesus as the Christ, the
prophesied Redeemer of Israel and Savior of the world, even while He was still
a very young child, see Luke 2:21-38 for this story of them.
MacArthur
writes “It was because he trusted in God and was seeking to understand His
revelation through the prophet Isaiah that the Ethiopian eunuch immediately
believed Philip’s testimony, placed his faith in Christ, and was saved (Acts
8:26-39). It was because they genuinely
trusted in God and sought to understand His will that certain Jews in Berea ‘received
the word [of Paul and Silas] with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures
daily, to see whether these things were so,…[and] therefore believed, along
with a number of prominent Greek women and men’ (Acts 17:11-12).”
MacArthur then goes on to write “To avoid the false
trust against which Jesus warned—of trusting the knowledge of Scripture itself
to give eternal life (John 5:39)—Paul, like his Lord, makes clear that the words
in sacred writings do not in themselves have power to save but rather that the
wisdom they impart leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
“Like many Christians in the early church, Timothy
and his mother and grandmother believed under both covenants. They had repented and sought the grace and
mercy of forgiveness from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Moses,
David, and Elijah. And when they heard
the gospel of Jesus Christ, then—like Joseph, Mary, Simeon, and Anna—they knew
that God’s great promise of the Messiah-Redeemer had been fulfilled, and they
immediately believed in Him as Savior and Lord.
“Just
as were the men and women mentioned in Hebrews 11, every Old Testament saint
was saved through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Although their spiritual understanding was
limited, they were like their ‘father Abraham, [who] rejoiced to see [Christ’s]
day, and he saw it and was glad’ (John 8:56), and like Moses who considered ‘the
reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt’ (Heb. 11:26). Whatever they may have known or not known
about the coming Messiah (cf. 1 Peter 1:10-12), they understood that He would
come to suffer for their sins as the sacrifice that would satisfy God. John summed up godly Jewish anticipation
when, upon first seeing Jesus, he exclaimed, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world!’ (John 1:29).
I have to say that I am amazed of how much John
MacArthur gets out of this one verse from 2 Timothy. However when I look at my Online Bible
program I see that others from generations before us also gets much out of the
Scriptures, and this too is something that I admire of these men who spent so much time in their studying of the
Scriptures.
Lord
willing tomorrow I will begin looking at “Scripture Provides Instruction for
Sanctification” as this study covers 2 Timothy 3:16-17 which says “All
Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate,
equipped for every good work.”
Spiritual
Meaning for my Life Today: Studying Scripture has always been my passion
every since the Lord saved me over 50 years ago. It is my desire to learn from the Word of
God, and then to pass on what I have learned to those who read my Spiritual
Diaries that are on my two blogs.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: I trust that the Holy Spirit of God will
cause the people he wants to read these Spiritual Diaries that I write, and
that they will bring glory to the Lord as He uses them to bring salvation to
those He has chosen and to cause believers to grow in Grace and in the
Knowledge of Jesus Christ.
5/24/2025 10:23 AM
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