EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/6/2026
7:46AM
My
Worship Time Focus: “God’s Strategy”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: Luke
1:35
Message
of the verse: “The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will
come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that
reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.”
We know from the previous verse that Mary wanted to know what exactly was
going to happen to her. Gabriel told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon
you.” There is no doubt that the
Holy Spirit plays a prominent role in Luke’s narrative of the Lord’s birth as
seen in Luke 1:15, 41, 67; 2:25-27. The
Holy Spirit would also be the power source throughout His earthly life and ministry as seen in Luke
3:221-22; Matthew 3:13-17; and John 1:32-34.
MacArthur writes: That the Holy Spirit would be involved in the creative
miracle of the conception of the God-man is not surprising, since He is God and
was involved in the creation of the world.
When ‘the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the
surface of the deep,…the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters”
(Gen. 1:2). The Holy Spirit, the original
agent of creation, would again become an agent of creation, this time in Mary’s
womb. There is not the slightest
suggestion in this text or anywhere else in Scripture of human sexual activity
involved in the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ.” That my fellow blog readers helps me to
understand the conception of the God-man Jesus Christ.
“Restarting
the profound reality of the Spirit’s involvement to underscore its
significance, Gabriel said to Mary, The power of the Most High will
overshadow you. The familiar Old
Testament title Most High (Heb. El Elyon) depicts God as the
sovereign, omnipotent ruler of heaven and earth. The God who made and upholds the universe
(Ps. 104:30; Col. 1:16-17) through His Spirit (Job 33:4) would create life in
Mary’s womb.”
(Ps. 104:30; Col. 1:16-17)
“30 When you send forth your Spirit, they are
created, and you renew the face of the ground.”
“16 For by him all things were created, in heaven
and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or
authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all
things hold together.”
(Job 33:4)
“4 The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath
of the Almighty gives me life.”
“The verb translated will
overshadow (episkiazo) is also used in the accounts of the
transfiguration (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:34) when the glory cloud
descended on Peter, James, and John. It
means ‘to surround,” ‘to encompass,’ or in a metaphorical sense, ‘to influence.’ The creative influence of the Spirit of God
would overshadow Mary to produce a child in her womb.”
Now the divine creative miracle
guaranteed that there will be two things that would be true of Mary’s Son. First, He would be a holy Child, which
would be unlike any other infant ever born.
Everyone who has ever lived, with the sole exception of the Lord Jesus
Christ, has been born a sinner (Job 15:14; 25:4; Eccles. 7:20; Isa. 53:6; Rom.
5:12; Gal. 3:22; cf. Gen. 3:6-13).
(Genesis 3:6-13)
“6 ¶ So when the woman saw that the tree was good
for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be
desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some
to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they
knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made
themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard
the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the
man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the
trees of the garden. 9 ¶ But the LORD God called to the man and said to
him, "Where are you?" 10 And
he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid,
because I was naked, and I hid myself." 11 ¶ He said, "Who told you that you were
naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" 12
The man said, "The woman whom you gave
to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman,
"What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent
deceived me, and I ate.’”
David
illustrated that truth when he wrote, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and
in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51:5).
David was not saying that he was an illegitimate child, but that
from the time of his conception he was a sinner. But Christ has always been the sinless Son of
God (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 7:26; 1 Peter 1:19; 2:22; 1 John 3:5; cf. John 8:46)
MacArthur goes on to write “Some
have erroneously suggested the reason that Jesus was sinless was that He had no
human father. But there is no biblical
evidence that the sin nature is passed on genetically only through the father. All men and women are born sinners because ‘in
Adam all die’ (1 Cor. 15:22), since ‘through the one man’s [Adam’s]
disobedience the many were made sinners’ (Rom. 5:19). In a manner beyond human comprehension,
Jesus was fully human, yet completely sinless from conception. The explanation of how that could be is
shrouded in the unfathomable mystery of the incarnation.
“Jesus had to be the perfectly holy Son
of God because His nature is that of the Holy One Himself, God the
Father. That rich title is uniquely
appropriate for Him, and Jesus Himself 22:70; cf. 2:49; 10:22), God the Father
(3:22; 9:35), Satan 4:3, 9), the demons (4:41; 8:28), and Paul (Acts 9:20;
13:33) all applied it to Him. The title
has profound implications concerning the person and work of the Lord Jesus
Christ (cf. John 1:49; 3:18; Rom. 1:4; 1 John 5:20). Here, however, the term is
used in a more restricted sense, signifying that Jesus is by nature the Son of
God manifested in human flesh. In the
words of the writer of Hebrews, Christ ‘is the radiance of [God’s] glory and
the exact representation of His nature’ (1:3; John 1:14; Phil. 2:6).”
3/6/2026
8:26 PM
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