MORNING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/17/2026
9:15 AM
My
Worship Time Focus:
“The Adult
Years in Nazareth”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: Luke
2:52
Message of the verse: “And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom
and stature, and in favor with God and men.”
Yesterday, while I was on my walk I
was able to listen to the last of three sermons that John MacArthur preached on
the previous verses from Luke that we spent several days looking at, and I have
to say that I learned many things from the SD’s that I wrote on those verses
and the sermons that I listened too.
Thinking about the conception of Jesus and then fast forwarding to the
time when He turned 12 years old and was then able to go to the temple, staying
there and listening to the teachers shows that Jesus began to become the Man
that God planned for Him to become as His heart and mind were beginning to open
to what He was called to do, and then in today’s verse “that He continued to
increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” Now this summary statement reveals all that
is known about the eighteen years Jesus spent in Nazareth from the age of twelve to the beginning of His public
ministry which began at the age of thirty. “23 Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about
thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of
Heli,” (Luke 3:23). MacArthur writes increasing
translates a form of the verb prokoto, which means ‘to progress’ or ‘to
advance.’ In the unfathomable mystery of
the incarnation, when Jesus ‘emptied Himself, taking the form of a
bond-servant, and [was] made in the likeness of men’ (Phil. 2:7), and was ‘found
in appearance as a man’ (v.8), He was subject to the normal process of human
growth and development. Jesus grew in wisdom
as His intellectual grasp of divine truth increased, physically in stature, and
spiritually in favor with God, strengthened by His victories over the
assaults of temptation (Heb. 4:15).” “15
For we do not have a high priest who is
unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been
tempted as we are, yet without sin.” “The
reference to His finding favor with man describes His increasing social
maturity and the respect He commanded.”
John MacArthur proposes a question
that is well worth our thinking about what the answerer would be: “The question arises as to why Jesus needed
to live all those years, instead of simply coming to earth, dying as a
substitute for sin, rising from the dead, and ascending back to heaven.” Now you can think about this question and
then figure out what you think the answer is, because there are good reasons as
to why Jesus had to come as a baby, grow up under the care of Joseph and Mary
for thirty years before He began His ministry which would end in His death, burial,
and resurrection from the dead, staying on earth for 40 day before returning to
heaven. Now MacArthur writes “The answer
is that He had to live a perfectly righteous life and ‘fulfill all
righteousness’ (Matt. 3:15) and thus prove to be the perfect sacrifice to take
the place of sinners (1 Peter 3:18).” “18 ¶ For Christ also suffered once for sins, the
righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to
death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” “Only then could His
righteousness be imputed to believers and their sins placed on Him. When Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that
God made ‘Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him,’ he expressed both aspects of Christ’s substitionary
atonement. Not only did Jesus bear believers’ sins, God also imputed
His righteousness to them. To put
it another way, God treated Christ as if He had lived believers’ sinful lives,
and believers as if they had lived his perfectly righteous life. Jesus lived a perfectly righteous life from
childhood through adulthood, so that His righteous life could be imputed to
believers. Salvation comes only to those
who do not have a ‘righteousness
of [their] own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ,
the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith’ (Phil. 3:9).
“It was not without purpose that the
Holy Spirit-inspired account of the Savior’s life in the four Gospels included
only this episode from the years between His birth and the launch of His public
ministry. This brief narrative,
bookended by two sweeping summary statements, reveals Jesus Christ as the Son
of God, whose perfectly sinless life qualified Him to be the only acceptable
sacrifice for sin (1 Peter 1:18-19), both having believers’ sins imputed to Him
and providing a righteous life to be imputed to them.”
(1 Peter 1:18-19)
“18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile
ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver
or gold, 19 but with the precious blood
of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”
Spiritual
Meaning for My Life Today: I am thankful to be able to study
this section of Scripture that shows Jesus as a child of twelve years old, as
this give to me tremendous insight into His life while on planet earth, and it
is my hope that the Holy Spirit of God will use these last SD’s to bring
someone or many to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: I am trusting that the Lord will continue to
use the Spiritual Diaries that I write to send the Gospel around the world, so
that it would bring glory to My Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.
4/17/2026
9:50 AM
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