EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/19/2026
11:14 PM
PT-5 “ARE YOU THE COMING ONE?
“Joel the
prophet saw that through the coming of the Expectant One, the Spirit of God
would be poured out upon all flesh. Isaiah saw that all the ends of the
earth would see the salvation of God through this Coming One. So you have
a victorious, triumphant picture of Christ as well as a recognition of His
humiliation. But the Jews could only see the triumphant side. They
were so engrossed with that, so were the disciples, that Jesus said to them and
could have said to all of the people of His day, "You fools and slow of
heart to believe all that is written about Me." John the Baptist
said, "There stands one among you whom you don't know." And the
New Testament says, "Had they known they would not have crucified the Lord
of glory." They wanted to know all about His power and sovereignty
and rule. They had no interest in those low tones of lowliness,
rejection, humiliation, suffering and death. But the Old Testament told
all about it. Isaiah said His face would be so marred, more than any man,
and His body, more than the sons of men. He would be literally disfigured
and He was in His crucifixion.
“In the
53rd chapter of Isaiah, that tender plant would come up out of Jesse but He
would be despised and He would be rejected and He would become a man of sorrows
and He would be acquainted with grief. He would be led, said Isaiah, like
a sl...like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep doesn't say anything before
its shearers, so He wouldn't open His mouth and He didn't. And Isaiah saw
Him dying a violent death. He was cut off from the land of the
living. Daniel even echoed that. Daniel said, "Messiah will be
cut off."
“And the
psalmist saw some of the details. The psalmist said He would be betrayed
by one of His own. Yes, says the psalmist, “My own familiar friend in
whom I trusted, who ate My bread, he lifted up His heel against Me.”
Zechariah even predicted that He would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver
and that the money would be given to the potter and that's what happened.
Judas, with the money burning in his hands for his reprehensible betrayal, went
back to the temple, threw the money at the religious leaders who then scooped
it up and bought a potter's field to bury strangers in. Zechariah also
said that when the shepherd is smitten, the sheep will scatter. And when
Jesus was taken, the disciples split. All the details, the picture is
unmistakable.
“Isaiah in
the 53rd chapter even sees Jesus moving from one tribunal to another in the
mockery of His trial. The psalmist foretold that He would be brought
before men who would bear false witness against Him and lie. Isaiah saw
Him scourged and spit on. The psalmist saw the actual manner of His
death. Psalm 22, "They pierced My hands and My feet."
Isaiah said He will be reckoned with criminals and murderers. The
psalmist said He would be mocked by the people who passed by who would wag
their heads at Him. The psalmist also said they would gamble for His
clothes and give Him vinegar to drink, and they did. And the psalmist
said, when He's on the cross He'll say, "My God, My God, why have You
forsaken Me?" and that's exactly what He said. The psalmist even
wrote, "Reproach has broken My heart." Anticipating that He
would die not by crucifixion, asphyxiation or having His legs broken, but His
heart shattered by the weight of the reproach of sinners placed on Him.
Not a bone of Him would be broken, Zechariah said. And when the soldiers
came by to break the legs of Jesus to hasten His death because when they broke
the legs, the crucified person could no longer push up and pushing up is how
you allowed yourself to breathe, as soon as the legs were broken, the slump
would crush His lungs and His life would be gone. But the Old Testament says
not a bone of Him would be broken. That's actually the Psalms, Psalm 34. And
they weren't because when they got to Jesus to break His legs, He was already
gone. Reproach had broken His heart. Zechariah said, "They'll
look on Him whom they pierced." Well, they pierced Him not only in
hands and feet, but they ran a sword into His side. Isaiah said,
"Though they had made His grave with the wicked," that is he said
they intended to bury Him with criminals, "yet His grave was with the
rich." You remember they were going to throw Him in a criminal's
cemetery, but Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man, came along and took His body and
put it in a proper place.
“The Old
Testament even predicts His resurrection. Psalm 16, "Thou wilt not
leave My soul in hell, neither will Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see
corruption. Thou wilt show Me the path of life." I'm going right
through the grave and out the other side with no corruption. Isaiah said
He will make His soul an offering for sin, Isaiah 53. "But He will
see His seed, He will prolong His days. He will see the travail of His
soul and be satisfied." He'll accomplish what He needed to through
death and He'll live forever, that's what Isaiah was saying.
“Job, the
oldest book in the Old Testament, predicted He would come again. Job
said, "My Redeemer lives and I know that He will stand at the latter day
upon the earth." And not only that, Job said, "I will see Him
for Myself." Job believed that His Redeemer would stand and live and
welcome Job into His presence. Zechariah even said when He comes back His
feet will go onto the Mount of Olives and He will become the King over all the
earth and reign forever and ever. Malachi said when He comes in judgment,
He will judge the ungodly in a terrible holocaust called the Day of the
Lord. But He will spare those who belong to Him, and take them into His
eternal care.
“This is
the One the Old Testament calls the Expected One. But the great prophet
John had some doubts because so much of what I've just given you apparently
wasn't in the forefront of Jewish thinking. It was all about the triumph,
all about the victory, all about the sovereignty, all about the kingdom, all
about the rule, the glory and they overlooked the humiliation part. And
the way things were going John's mind had become confused. The angels
knew He would be the Expected One. The shepherds knew, the wise men knew,
certainly Mary knew. Eventually the apostles knew. And John just needed
to be sure. "Are You the Expected One?"
“Well, how
did Jesus answer? Go back to verse 21, Luke 7. We're going to look
at this text, by the way, in detail next week. This is just a kind of
overview. At that very time with those two disciples from John there, at
that very time He cured many people of diseases and afflictions and evil
spirits and granted sight to many who were blind. He just did a flit, a
flurry of miracles all over the place, chu-chu-chu-chu-chu-chu-chu,
instantaneous; gave them a private display of divine power. "And He
answered and said to them," there's your answer, "'Go and report to
John what you have seen and heard. The blind receive sight. The
lame walk. The lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead
are raised up. The poor have the gospel preached to them.'" Now John
would have known that certainly the blind receiving sight and the gospel being
preached to the poor comes from Isaiah 61 so Jesus was fulfilling Old
Testament prophecy. But the fact that He could give sight to the blind,
He could make lame people walk, lepers be cleansed, deaf people hear, and raise
dead people was a clear indication of who He was, right? Just tell John
what you saw firsthand.
“Jesus
couldn't fulfill all the prophecies for John. If John had been on the
other side of the cross, I don't think He would have asked Him. If John
had been on the other side of the resurrection, he wouldn't have asked.
John doesn't make it to that point. He gets beheaded. So not all
the prophecies are going to come to pass, so Jesus says, "Just tell him
what you saw Me do." And then He adds in verse 23, "And blessed
is he that keeps from stumbling over Me."
“What did
He mean by that? Don't be offended by the truth, people. Don't be
skeptical. Just believe and be eternally blessed, right? The
evidence is consummate. Don't stumble, just believe and especially
now. You have what John didn't have, all the rest of the New Testament
with all of its indications of the fact that Jesus fulfilled all the prophecies
of the Coming One. He's all you need. He's all we need. He's
all we want. Christ is our all in all. He said, "I am the
Christ," and He met our need for a Savior. He said, "I am the
Bread of life," and He met the hunger of our souls. He said, "I
am the Light of the World," and He dispelled our darkness. He said,
"I am the Door of the sheep," and He ended our spiritual
homelessness. He said, "I am the Good Shepherd," and He took us
into His fold. He said, "I am the Resurrection and the Life,"
and He conquered our death. He said, "I am your Master," and He
provided for our dependence. He said, "I am the Way, the Truth and
the Life," and He took us to God.
“Do you
believe? If you do you are blessed. If you stumble, you are
cursed. Blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over Me. Don't be
offended by the truth, don't be skeptical, believe and be saved.
“We honor
You, Lord Jesus, this morning. You are the Coming One. You are the
Expected One. There is no doubt and that is why we call You Lord.
That is why we give You our life, all of it, holding nothing back. We are
satisfied. We don't need angels, we have Scripture. The outline of
the Old Testament is perfectly clear and can only be filled in by the majestic
colors of Christ that appear in the New Testament. The picture is clear, Jesus
is the Coming One and we confess Him as Lord and Savior gratefully. Amen.”
This concludes the sermon that John
MacArthur preached on “Are You the Coming One?”
In tomorrow morning’s SD I will begin to quote more from the
introduction that is found in MacArthur’s commentary, and there are many, many
verses to quote and so it will take a few more days to complete the
introduction, but I think that this will time well spent.
8/19/2026
11:18 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment