EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
5/11/2026 11:14`PM
My
Worship Time Focus: PT-2
“The Setting”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference:
Luke
4:14-15
Message of the verses: “And Jesus returned to Galilee in the
power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding
district. And He began teaching in their
synagogues and was praised by all.
I want to pick up where I left off this morning, and I
believe that it will take at least one more SD after the one that I do this
evening.
“The Lord’s reply to Nathanael
displayed another attribute of God, transcendence: ‘Because I said to you that
I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe?
You will see greater things than these.’
And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the
heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’’(vv.
50-51). Jesus’ divine transcendence
provides access to heaven for those who believe in Him.”
Now before leaving Judea, we see
that Jesus made a brief detour back into Galilee in order to attend a wedding (John
2:1-11). The site for the wedding was
the village of Cana, not far from His hometown of Nazareth. It was during the celebration the wine ran
out, a glaring breach of etiquette that could have stigmatized the couple for
the rest of their lives. Jesus’ mother,
Mary came to him to ask for help, so Jesus miraculously created wine, thus
displaying another attribute of deity, omnipotence. This would have been His first miracle in the
book of John, and to my thinking that would have been His very first
miracle.
Now after a brief stay in Capernaum
(2:12), Jesus went to Jerusalem in order to celebrate the Passover (2:13). This marked the start of His ministry in
Judea. Now the first recorded event of
that ministry, the cleansing of the temple as seen in (2:14-17, introduced yet
another of Christ’s divine attributes, His holiness. His supernatural insight into those who
expressed a shallow, false nonsaving faith in Him once again revealed Jesus’
omniscience (2:23-25).
MacArthur continues to look at John’s
gospel by writing “John’s account of the Judean ministry also focused on the
message Jesus proclaimed. That message
had two essential elements. First, He
taught the necessity of regeneration, or the new birth. In His conversation with the prominent Jewish
teacher Nicodemus, Jesus declared, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is
born again he cannot see the kingdom of God’ (3:3). Then in verses 11-21, Jesus taught that
regeneration is appropriated through believing in Him. The familiar words of verses 16-18 summarize
that truth:
16 “For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him
will not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For
God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so
that the world might be saved through Him. 18 The
one who believes in Him is not judged; the one who does not believe has been
judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of
God.”
“Finally, John reveals Christ’s
mission. His encounter with a Samaritan
woman showed that Jesus came to be ‘the Savior of the world’ (4:42; cf. 1 John
4:14), not merely of the Jews. After
staying ‘two days [in the Samaritan village Jesus] went forth from there into
Galilee’ (v. 43).
“Because of His extended ministry in
Judea, ‘when He came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him, having seen all
the things that He did in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves also went
to the feast’ (v. 45). They had been
exposed to Jesus’ teaching and the miraculous signs He preformed when they went
to Jerusalem for Passover. They were
ready for more.”
MacArthur now seems to go back to
Luke as he writes “Luke’s note that He began teaching in their synagogues
introduces the pattern and the priority of the Lord’s ministry. The priority for Jesus was teaching
God’s Word, (cf. Mark 1:38), and throughout Luke’s gospel He is constantly portrayed
as a teacher of God’s truth (cf. 4:31; 5:3, 17; 6:6; 11:1; 13:10, 22; 19:47;
20:01; 21:37; 23:5). He is also
frequently referred to as the Teacher (7:40; 8:49; 9:38; 10:25;11:45; 12:13;
18:18; 19:39; 20:21, 28, 39; 21:7; 22:11).
“The numerous synagogues that
existed in Galilee provided the perfect venue for Jesus’ teaching. Since the minimum number of Jewish men
required to form a synagogue was ten, most, if not all, of the 240 cities and
villages in Galilee would have had at least one. Some of the larger cities may have had dozens
of them (according to the Jerusalem Talmud there were 480 in Jerusalem, though
that number is disputed). Synagogues
were usually built out of stone, and typically faced Jerusalem. They existed primarily for instruction in the
Scriptures. In a synagogue Sabbath
service, a passage from the Old Testament would be read, followed by a teacher
explaining its meaning to the congregation.”
“The synagogues were by no means
considered a replacement for the Jerusalem temple, which was the heart and soul
of Judaism. Only at the temple could the
sacrifices prescribed in the law of Moses be offered and the feasts and
ceremonies celebrated, not in the synagogues (there are no Old Testament
references to synagogues). But after the
Babylonians destroyed the temple when they sacked Jerusalem in 586 B. C., the
Jewish exiles began gathering in small groups to hear the teaching of God’s
Word (cf. Ezekiel 8:1; 14:1; 20:1; 33:31).
Those informal gatherings eventually developed into the synagogues of
Jesus’ time. The Jews of the Diaspora
(those who lived outside of Palestine) lacked ready access to the rebuilt
Jerusalem temple. Thus they too built
synagogues, as the book of Acts indicates (9:2, 20; 13:5, 14; 14:1; 17:1, 10,
17; 18:4, 19). The apostle Paul, like
Jesus, frequently preached the gospel in those synagogues (Acts 17:17; 18:4,
19:19:8).”
5/12/2026
12:01 AM
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